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THE FAITH aA ; 


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Do to death, as He has died. 
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* 


CEAPTER 


VIII. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


INTRODUCTION ; ; : y ; I 
BELLIES IN; GOD. : } p ; 6 


THE INCARNATION AND THE ATONEMENT. Io 


THE CHURCH ; We cena! 
THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE MeN Red 
BAPTISM AND CONFIRMATION . mab act 
THE MASS . ; : : ty a 
THE RESERVED SACRAMENT . : As 
CONFESSION . ey, 
UNCTION OF THE SICK . ‘ seed: 
HOLY ORDERS .. : : : a eD 
HOLY MATRIMONY . ; Sy AS 
OUR LADY AND THE SAINTS . LOL 
THE LAST THINGS . A : nL 
CONCLUSION . : ; sos 


INDEX . : : ; ; ; eATTS 





CHAPTER I 
: INTRODUCTION 


URING the last year a demand has been some- 
ID what insistently made that Anglo-Catholics 
should show their hand, and explain what they 
mean, and say what they want. Ifan attempt is made 
to answer the challenge, there must needs be some 
definition who Anglo-Catholics are, and some state- 
ment how they have come to be. The writer of this 
book does not love the word Anglo-Catholic. Both for 
linguistic and for theological reasons he would prefer 
to call himself an English Catholic. But the wide use 
of the word in popular speech makes it one which 
cannot be avoided, and to which even those who could 
have wished for another phrase must consent. It is 
indeed not new. Besides the older use of it, the 
Tractarians called themselves by this name, and their 
critics so described them ;? and this fact may serve to 
illustrate features in the history of what is known as 
Anglo-Catholicism to-day. For the Anglo-Catholics of 
to-day are the successors of the men who nearly one 
hundred years ago began and carried through the 
Oxford Movement. 
The Oxford Movement was the result of many 
different causes, some remote, some near at hand. 
It was affected by many different influences. The 


1See, among many other instances, J. H. Newman, Tracts for the 
Times, no. xc (1841), p. 25; C. Bronté, Shirley (1849), i, p. I. 


2 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


promoters and supporters of it included men of very 
different history and character and attainments. In 
its sources and in its history there were diversities. 
But there was one great desire which pervaded the 
earliest stages of the whole Movement; and, with 
whatever modifications in details or effects, remained 
all along. This great desire was to find and express 
the true authority for theological belief and church 
organization and religious life. In seeking this au- 
thority the Tractarians tried to see the facts and 
the meaning of history. They looked back to an- 
tiquity. They sought to know what was the tradition 
which the Church of the first centuries had received 
from the Apostles, to see how it was sustained by 
Holy Scripture, to understand how the ancient Church 
had given it expression and form. There was one 
way—the way of truth, the way of worship, the way 
of holiness—which once for all had been committed 
to the saints, which was the abiding inheritance of the 
Church on earth. It was the gift of God, not made 
but received by man. It was in sharp contrast to 
the many forms of error, the many kinds of perverted 
devotion, the many undisciplined phases of life, which 
human sin and mistake had brought to be. To 
strengthen the teaching of the dogma inherited from 
the earliest centuries was the right means of opposing 
the inroads of unbelief. The Oxford writers made 
their appeal to the Church of the Fathers and the 
Church of the New Testament; they regarded the 
historic Catholic Church as the teacher of truth and 
the home of grace; and, beyond all that they gained 
for belief and worship, they tried to rekindle and 
renew the spiritual significance of our Lord’s earthly 
life. 


INTRODUCTION 3 


As time went on, two new features came into the 
Movement. In its beginnings it was intellectual and 
largely academical. Notwithstanding the desire to 
promote goodness, which had been strong from the 
first, and the deep sympathy with all sorts and condi- 
tions of men, which had never been absent, the character 
of its appeal necessarily made it the work of the learned 
and the refined, and necessarily it found its chief 
response among those who possessed well equipped 
and cultivated minds. But it soon found fuller scope. 
Soon the supporters of it were no longer confined to 
natrow circles. They moved out into wider spheres 
of Church activity. The work of the Movement went 
on in parishes filled with poor and ignorant people ; 
and the missionary enterprise which had always been 
very near to the heart of the Movement expanded in 
practical work of many kinds at home and abroad. 
When this expansion took place, new needs of prac- 
tical urgency were felt, and could not be resisted. 
As one result, the warmth and brightness of a beautiful 
and appealing and impressive ceremonial was added 
to the original austerity. That which had been known 
as Tractarian came to be called Ritualistic. London 
and other centres, as well as Oxford, began to have 
their say. 

The other new feature also was the result of a widen- 
ing influence. The earliest appeal had been to the 
ancient Church and the Scripture behind it, and in a 
less degree to that preservation of the earliest tradition 
which, it was believed, might be found in the authorized 
formularies and the great divines of the English Church 
since the Reformation. As the facts were studied, 
a sense of isolation made itself felt. The Church of 
England, alone, exclusive, separated from other 


4 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


Christians in all parts of the world, seemed very 
different from the Church of the Fathers with its — 
wide extent and far reaching influence, which was 
Catholic not only because it was orthodox but also 
because it was the Church of the whole world. And, 
on another line of thought, it was seen that the Churches 
of the East and the Church of Rome could no longer 
be merely condemned or lightly ignored, but must 
be taken into serious account. Hence came a desire 
to find out all that was good in Roman and Eastern 
theology and life, to search for agreement rather than 
for difference, to adapt and use the principles and 
methods of Roman and Eastern thought and devotion. 
The study of theologians who gave allegiance to Rome 
was added to that of the Reformation and _ post- 
Reformation English divines. Ways of prayer and 
worship and work were modelled on much which had 
not hitherto been known in the English Church. Re- 
treats, missions, systems of meditation, services of 
which the Three. Hours is a notable instance, were 
given a place in English Church life. The claim of 
the English Church to be a true part of the Catholic 
Church had already been strongly emphasized; and 
the desire for reunion with the East and with Rome, 
which had never been quite extinguished, gradually 
grew in intensity and determination and force. 

From this origin and this development those who 
are now known as Anglo-Catholics have come to be. 
They are a large company. Among them there are 
wide differences. They do not form a mechanically 
organized party. Many of them are suspicious of any 
kind of direction and control, very sensitive to any kind 
of interference. Many of them are so far touched 
by the spirit of the age as to claim independence of 


INTRODUCTION P 


action to a very large extent. Some words of the 
accomplished historian Mr. Henry Offley Wakeman 
are even more true now than when he wrote them in 
1896. ‘“‘ Since 1845 the High Church revival has never 
been the work* of a party within the Church. High 
Churchmen have never been like an army organized 
under definite and authoritative leadership, still less 
like a parliamentary group, which answers obediently 
to the crack of the whip. Their common action has 
been constantly marked by much independence of 
thought and practice.’”? 

But, if there are differences among Anglo-Catholics, 
there is much more that unites. And what unites is 
fundamental. Mr. Wakeman’s further words are true 
again of those to-day, as they were of those of an 
earlier time. “‘ Still less,’ he continues, “‘ have they 
been a disorderly mob, actuated merely by frivolity 
and passion. They have been rather like one of the 
great political parties under a constitutional govern- 
ment, men united in common action by a belief in 
common principles, held in very varying degrees of 
intensity and perspective, but clear enough in their 
main outlines.’’? 

In the following pages the writer must try to show 
what Anglo-Catholics have in common, and wherein 
they differ; how far they have inherited the position 
of the Tractarians, from whom they sprang, and how 
far they have altered or supplemented it; what is 
their relation to the Church of England as a whole, 
and to the Catholic Church throughout the world. 


1H. O. Wakeman, An Introduction to the History of the Church 
of England (ninth edition, 1919), p. 470. 
2 Ibid. 


CHAPTER II 
BELIEF IN GOD 


T is easy for a casual visitor to an Anglo-Catholic 
church to make great mistakes. He observes, 
perhaps, a pageant of worship, careful attention 

to minute details, regard for symmetry. He listens, 
perhaps, to strong assertions about sacramental grace, 
to some panegyric of our Lady or the saints, to em- 
phatic insistence on the more outward aspects of 
Christian duty. He is, it may be, given an impression 
of formalism or unreality. If to some extent he 
appreciates the splendour or the exactness or the 
regularity, he may in other ways be repelled, and he 
may miss much of the real meaning of what he sees 
and hears, and may fail to understand what is behind 
it. It is easy to know a man for years and even to 
talk much with him, and yet not to understand what 
is nearest to his heart and what he cares for most. 
It is easy, again, to know a man from his public reputa- 
tion, and to have formed an unfavourable opinion of 
him, and later somehow to find that the man himself 
is most conscious of and most deplores the faults which 
to the outsider have obscured the real beauty and 
power of his life. In some such way, one who has 
looked at the outside only of Anglo-Catholic teaching 
and worship may sometimes have seen formality, 
superficiality, harshness, narrowness, where these really 


BELIEF IN GOD y 


are not; and have failed to discern what is behind and 
beyond the external features which he has observed. 
For devotion to the great truths of the Christian religion 
is the essential ‘element in Anglo-Catholic life. 

Central among the great truths of the Christian 
religion is the doctrine of God. By a long process, 
extending through the books of the Old and the New 
Testaments, the Christian doctrine of God was de- 
veloped. It was asserted or implied in the decisions 
of the Church, and was elaborated in the common 
thought and teaching of the Christian divines. 

The Christian belief in God regards Him as eternal, 
as transcending the universe which He created no less 
than immanent in it, as distinct in nature from the 
highest of His creatures, as possessing the moral per- 
fection whereby He includes in Himself all possible 
good, as able to do all things which do not contradict 
His own being and attributes. He is supreme love. 
He is pitiful, He is merciful, He is full of long-suffering, 
He is One the ascription to whom of grief for human 
ills fails only because it is true in a sense higher than 
any known in man. He has all that is most loving 
inaparent’scare. But He has also in supreme measure 
other attributes of a good father. He is not without 
sternness. As He has grief and pity in senses far 
surpassing the human meaning of the words, so also 
He has righteous wrath. The Catholic tradition has 
steadfastly kept the assertion of those widely differing 
qualities in the divine life which Holy Scripture in 
rich abundance reveals. 

Tractarians and Anglo-Catholics' have held this 


1It will be convenient in this book to adopt the popular usage 
by which ‘‘ Tractarians ’’ denotes the earlier generation, and “‘ Anglo- 
Catholics ’’ their successors at the present time. Properly speaking, 
the words are interchangeable; see p. 1, above. 


8 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


tradition fast. It may be true that there have been 
differences between them. In the Tractarians, awe | 
and reverence and an intense recollection of responsi- 
bility may sometimes have taken the wrong form of 
gloom. Among Anglo-Catholics the dread of gloom, 
rightly recognized as often strengthening temptation 
and leading to sin, may sometimes have seemed to 
lessen the sense of responsibility and reverence and 
awe. So far as this has been so, the differences have 
been due to differing imperfections as the pendulum 
has swung first one way and then another; they have 
not been the result of any fault in the fundamental 
belief. In an age when there are many tendencies to 
ignore God, or to regard His Being as not essentially 
distinct from that of man, or so to pervert the idea of 
His Fatherhood as to minimize the thought of Him 
as the almighty Ruler and the righteous Judge, there 
is need of the great truths about God which are common 
to Tractarian and Anglo-Catholic alike. 

The central truth about God is the assertion of His 
love. His love is not limited to time. It is a part 
of His eternal Being, existing, real, active, before the 
work of creation began. Through eternity the life 
of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost has been. The love 
of the Father for the Son, of the Son for the Father, 
of the Father and the Son for the Holy Ghost, of the 
Holy Ghost for the Father and the Son, had no be- 
ginning, as it will have no end. The doctrine of the 
Holy Trinity—of the three Persons who are one God 
—was seen by the Church to be necessarily implied 
in the teaching of Holy Scripture, and was made part 
of the constant message of Christian truth. In their 
emphasis on this doctrine Catholic theologians endea- 
voured to meet the deepest needs of Christian thought 


BELIEF IN GOD 9 


and devotion. For these needs cannot be satisfied 
save in the God who is eternal, in whose eternal Being 
there are the activities of life, and in whose life before 
as well as after creation is an abiding exercise of love. 
A theology which departs from the doctrine of the 
Holy Trinity, which Tractarian and Anglo-Catholic 
have received from the Universal Church, may have 
a temporary attraction ; but its failure to satisfy the 
abiding demands of human thought and prayer de- 
prives it of real and lasting value. 


CHAPTER III 
THE INCARNATION AND THE ATONEMENT 


HE Old Testament leads up to, and the New 
Testament records, the fact of the Incarnation. 
The Church has clearly expressed the teaching 

of Holy Scripture, and the inferences which must be 
drawn if the assertions contained in Holy Scripture 
are to be maintained. In the Incarnation the Son of 
God became Man. He is Himself the eternal Son, 
who possessed throughout eternity the fulness of God- 
head, who is Himself God equally with the Father. 
In his incarnate life He remains all that He has always 
been. There is no abandonment, no lessening of His 
divine life. Throughout the most splendid, and 
throughout the most lowly, acts and sufferings of His 
human life He is really and fully God. And the human 
life which He takes to be His own is no less real and 
no less complete than His divine Being. In it He 
Himself, the eternal Son of God, is conceived and 
born, lives as child and man, is tempted and suffers, 
dies and is buried. He has in all fulness body and 
mind and spirit with all their organs and faculties. 
Of these organs and faculties there is real exercise, 
properly human, in His acts and sufferings. To the 
two co-ordinate truths of His Godhead and His man- 
hood the Church is pledged. To make Him anything 
less than God even in the deepest humiliations of His 


INCARNATION AND THE ATONEMENT 11 


human life, or to make Him not fully Man at any time 
since the beginning of His human life, is to slip into 
heresy. The one Being, the Son of God, is really, 
completely, inseparably, indissolubly, God and Man. 
As God and Man He is the supreme example of human 
life, He is able to make atonement for human sin, and 
He can unite human beings to Himself. 

The human life of the Son of God has a miraculous 
character both in itself and in its effects. He was 
the Son of a Virgin Mother, He wrought many miracles, 
He rose from the dead. It is as fitting as it is reason- 
able that He who is God as well as Man should be, 
even in His human life, more than He would have 
been had He been only Man. 

There are subtle and difficult questions about the 
relations of the divine and the human natures in our 
Lord, about the influence of His divine Being on His 
human knowledge and the capacity of His human 
mind to receive from His Godhead, about the effects 
of His divine power on His human weakness and of 
His human weakness on the exercise of His divine 
power. Such questions, which have been discussed 
by the Schoolmen of the middle ages and by modern 
theologians, are altogether outside the scope of this 
book. About them there are differences of opinion 
among Anglo-Catholics, as there were among the 
Fathers and the Schoolmen and the Tractarians; but 
these are differences which are found together with 
the agreement that the incarnate Son of God is one 
Christ, true God and true Man. 

Theologians have differed as to the relation of the 
Incarnation to the Fall. The answer to the question 
whether the Son of God would have become Man if 
man had not sinned was one of the many points of 


12 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


disagreement between the two chief groups of the 
medizval Schoolmen. In the time of the Tractarians 
the question was not prominent, and differences about 
it on the part of those who had considered it do not 
seem to have excited much attention or caused any 
alarm. A little later it was much discussed in Eng- 
land. Interest in it has again become less, and it is 
not likely that any considerable number of Anglo- 
Catholics would attach great importance to it. 

Whether it be true or untrue that the Son of God 
would have become Man if man had not sinned, the 
Incarnation as it actually took place was a remedy 
for sin. The sin for which a cure was thus found 
included both the original sin which is the result of 
inheritance and the sin which men in their own lives 
commit. To study the history of the doctrine of 
original sin affords one of the most fascinating as well 
as one of the most difficult of inquiries. It is of 
absorbing interest to observe how what attracts one 
mind repels another, how what to one seems dictated 
by strict reasoning appears altogether unreason- 
able to another. The differences are not new any 
more than the facts of life and the characteristics of 
temperament which suggest them. Anglo-Catholics 
can hardly ask that, where so great divergencies have 
existed in the Church all along, there should be com- 
plete uniformity of opinion in their own ranks. But 
they can agree that, whether or not a fuller meaning 
is to be attached to original sin, human nature as it 
now comes into the world at the conception and birth 
of a child is not as it ought to be and as it might have 
been, but is at the least impaired by a defect and a. 
weakness which are due to that sin in the past which 
is known as the Fall. 


INCARNATION AND THE ATONEMENT 13 


It was an object, then of the Incarnation to cure 
original sin, to ‘supply the help which man needed 
even apart from the sins which individual men commit. 
But the needs of human life, as it was at the time of 
the Incarnation and as it still is, are far greater than 
the mere removal of original sin. The study of history 
and attention to contemporary events alike show the 
failure of mankind as it is illustrated by evil deeds 
and by good left undone. While original sin may not 
be left out of account, actual sin presents one of the 
chief problems of life. 

The Incarnation is the answer of God to man’s 
conviction that he needs help. For it is through the 
Incarnation that the Atonement is wrought. The 
life and death of our Lord have atoning power. In 
Him human life at its best and noblest, human life 
without sin and with moral perfection, makes an 
offering in dedicating itself so supremely to the will 
of God the Father that the sacrifice does not stop 
short of willing death. Were it only a human sacri- 
fice, it would have high value. But it is not only a 
human sacrifice. It is the sacrifice of Him who, besides 
being Man, is also God. And therefore the efficacy 
of it is not only that efficacy which it might have 
from complete self-surrender, perfect self-sacrifice. 
Besides all that it might thus possess, it has also the 
power of God. It is true that the nature of the Atone- 
ment is not defined in Holy Scripture. It is true that 
on this subject the authorized formularies of the 
Catholic Church have maintained a deep reserve. 
But neither Holy Scripture nor the official theology 
of the Church can be satisfied with less than a doctrine 
which sees in the Atonement the loving provision of 
God the Father for the sinful human race, and the 


14 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


powerful act of God the Son made Man by means of 
which there is forgiveness for the sins of men. In their 
insistence on this truth Anglo-Catholics are in harmony 
with their Tractarian predecessors as well as with the 
Evangelical precursors and contemporaries of the 
Tractarians. 

The offering of Himself by our Lord did not end 
with His death on the cross. His death was the 
prelude to His resurrection, and the resurrection was 
the prelude to His ascension and heavenly life. In 
glory at the right hand of the Father He is a priest 
on His throne. His offering continually pleaded is 
an abiding sacrifice, the sacrifice of Himself. The 
commemoration which Christians make of His work 
for them is a commemoration of the Lord Himself, and 
therefore of all the acts and sufferings of His human 
life, and notably of His passion and death, His resur- 
rection and ascension, His session on His throne in 
heaven. 


CHAPTER IV 
THE CHURCH 


AL ity redemption of mankind was accomplished 
by our Lord when in the ascension He presented 
to the Father His finished work. But the 
results of that work had yet to be developed and 
applied. As the ascension followed on from the death 
and resurrection, so also the ascension itself led to the 
descent of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost, the 
third Person in the Holy Trinity, who had always 
since the creation had His work on earth, was now sent 
by God the Son from God the Father in a new manner 
and with new operations. The people of God, who 
in Old Testament times had received God’s special 
vocation, and had been in special fashion the instru- 
ment of His will, was now to be filled with new power. 
The little remnant of the chosen race, which had been 
faithful in the supreme crisis of the vocation, and 
had accepted our Lord as the Messiah, and had become 
His disciples, inherited the promises to the race, and 
was made to be the Christian Church, and was filled 
with the Holy Ghost. 

The Church thus formed was the instrument of God. 
It had its divinely appointed work of teaching and 
hallowing those who through its missionary efforts 
should become Christians. As the teacher of truth 
and the home of grace, it was, in the power of the 


16 =6©©FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


Holy Ghost, to make the gifts of God through the 
Incarnation effective in human lives. On its outward | 
side, it was a company of men and women and children 
united in a fellowship of life and prayer which was 
sustained by the teaching of the apostles and by sacra- 
mental grace. In its inward being, it was the bride 
and body of Christ, the shrine of the Holy Ghost, the 
family of God. As time went on and the Church grew, 
its limits were clearly seen. The members of the Church 
were those who believed the orthodox faith, who had 
been baptized into the body of Christ, and who con- 
tinued in communion with the episcopal ministry 
which had descended from the apostles. 

The Church is the teacher of truth. The method of 
its teaching may take different forms. There is the 
promulgation of Holy Scripture. There are the deci- 
sions of Councils. There are the utterances of 
accredited teachers. There are the necessary in- 
ferences from worship. In each case what is impor- 
tant is how far that which is taught is the right and 
permanent expression of the Church’s mind. 

In promulging Holy Scripture the Church has given 
Holy Scripture a very distinctive place. Phrases 
such as that Holy Scripture is the word of God, or 
that God is the author of Holy Scripture, or that 
through Holy Scripture the Holy Ghost spoke, have 
been frequently used, and have been accepted with a 
greater or less degree of authority. The written word 
of God has often been compared with the personal 
Word of God in such a way as to suggest some corres- 
pondence between the revelation in Holy Scripture 
and the revelation in the Incarnation. With these 
expressions a pronounced view of the authority of 
Holy Scripture has been associated for a long period 


THE CHURCH | 17 


of time and by very many teachers. The absence of 
error has been asserted. Each word of the original 
texts has been said to be inspired in the sense that, 
if the record was designed as history, the history is 
necessarily true in every detail; if statements are 
figurative, the facts or doctrines represented by the 
figures are wholly accurate; if there is teaching, the 
teaching cannot contain any mistake. The tendency 
has been to minimize the human element in the books, 
and towards making the divine inspiration almost all. 
Such a view of Holy Scripture was the most usual way 
of regarding it in the early Church. There were impor- 
tant exceptions, but it was the opinion of most of 
the Fathers. It passed from them into the theology 
of the middle ages. In the sixteenth century it received 
a new emphasis; for, while retained both by Roman 
Catholics and by the Reformers as a whole, the stress 
on it became greater in Protestant quarters because 
among Protestants there was less use of the mystical 
interpretation which had somewhat lightened the 
burden of the theory for the Fathers and the medieval 
writers. The Tractarians inherited and did not ques- 
tion this general way of regarding the Bible. And 
they accepted with it as a matter of course the tra- 
ditional ascription of the books of the Bible to par- 
ticular writers, and the traditional view of the compo- 
sition of the books. The last century has been a time 
of much study of the Bible, a time of vehemently 
maintained and passionately attacked theories, a time 
in which almost every received opinion on the subject 
has been challenged. The effect of all this has been 
seen in the successors of the Tractarians. There is 
probably no matter on which there is more difference 
among Anglo-Catholics to-day than the questions 


18 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


about Holy Scripture. The opinions of some differ 
little from those of the majority of the Fathers or the | 
Schoolmen or the Reformers. Others have accepted 
theories affected by the historical and critical methods 
of the time, and have found no difficulty in fitting 
new opinions about the composition and the author- 
ship and the interpretation of the books of Holy 
Scripture into their theological beliefs. In this respect, 
perhaps, more than any other, many Anglo-Catholics 
have departed far from the mind of the Tractarians, as 
also they are far removed from the most authoritative 
teachers of the Church of Rome. It may not be with- 
out significance that a similar change of position 
appears to be taking place among the Evangelicals 
in the English Church. 

Some change, though not so great a change as in 
regard to Holy Scripture, may be seen also in the 
attitude of the Anglo-Catholics towards the authority 
of the Church in general as compared with that of the 
Tractarians. Both alike affirm the complete authority 
of decisions of Councils universally accepted which 
have defined doctrines as being of obligatory belief, 
and the high importance of the uniform teaching of 
representative theologians, and the high value of 
inferences which may be drawn from worship found 
everywhere within the Church. But a difference may 
be seen in the reasons because of which these con- 
clusions are received. By the Tractarians, for the 
most part, universality of belief or practice was valued 
chiefly because it was regarded as a sign of apostolicity, 
because it was a witness to the tradition which had 
been handed down in the Church from the first. Many 
Anglo-Catholics, on the other hand, regard universal 
consent within the Church as in itself the result of the - 


THE CHURCH 19 


divine guidance; and attach importance no less to 
a providential development than to the preservation 
of a tradition committed to the Church by the apostles. 
This difference of attitude brings with it another 
difference also. For the Tractarian, the older a doc- 
trine or practice, the nearer is it to what is true and 
right, because it is less far removed from the time of 
the apostles; and the appeal to antiquity is one of 
the most marked features of the Tractarian teaching. 
For many Anglo-Catholics the appeal to antiquity has 
less weight than other considerations; and, if there 
be universal acceptance within the Church, it is not for 
them a matter of serious moment whether that accep- 
tance is found in the fifth century or in the first half 
of the eleventh. 

There can be little doubt that in the ancient Church 
the Bishop of Rome held a very remarkable, and, in 
some respects, a unique position. He was regarded 
as the chief Bishop in Christendom ; he had a primacy 
which, if undefined, was not unimportant; it was 
natural for him to initiate inquiries and to promulgate 
the results of inquiries. In the course of time, the 
influence and power of the Popes increased; their 
claims became greater; the tendency was for the 
primacy to pass into a supremacy. The supremacy 
of the Pope and the necessity of communion with him 
for membership in the Church were maintained by the 
Popes in the fifth century and later; through the 
middle ages this supremacy and necessity were usually 
acknowledged in the West; and in the nineteenth 
century belief in the infallibility of papal decisions 
for the whole Church on matters of faith and morals, 
which had already been held by many, was made 
obligatory for those in communion with the See of Rome. 


20 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


The Tractarians were not concerned to deny that the 
Pope had possessed some kind of primacy in the ancient 
Church, and that, if Christendom should once more 
be united, he would again naturally be the primate 
of the universal Church; but papal supremacy and 
the necessity of communion with the Pope as a con- 
dition of communion with the Church were rejected 
by all of them except those who became Roman 
Catholics. Those who were still alive in 1870, the 
year when papal infallibility was defined, continued to 
deny that doctrine. Among Anglo-Catholics of to-day 
there are considerable differences in the attitude taken 
towards the papacy. The position of some is much 
the same as that most characteristic of the Tractarians. 
But with many there has been a certain change of 
outlook. Probably there are but few who are so far 
inconsistent in remaining within the English Church 
that they are ready to acknowledge the supremacy 
and infallibility of the Pope; but there are many who 
have come to recognize more fully and cordially that 
in the light of history the Pope may claim a primacy 
in the Church, and some of these are willing to assert 
that this primacy has a degree of divine right or divine 
authority which others would not allow. 

During the last fifty years the desire for the re-union 
of Christendom, which had never become quite extinct 
in the English Church, has grown steadily stronger. 
It is felt by all Anglo-Catholics; and most of them 
agree that, whatever possibilities there may be with 
Protestant Dissenters, union with Rome and the 
Fast is of chief importance, and is the most likely to 
lead eventually to the re-union of all Christians. Some 
—probably the considerable majority—regard the 
prospects of re-union with Rome as more hopeful 


‘THE CHURCH 21 


than the prospects of re-union with the East, and 
attach most value to such a reconciliation as will make 
Western Catholics one united Church under the pri- 
macy of the Pope. Others hold the contrary view 
that for the present our hopes should be extended 
rather to the Churches of the East. All these alike 
would wish that the first partial re-union—whether 
with Rome or with the East—should be a step to- 
wards a union which may include all Catholics of the 
West and Orthodox of the East, and finally gather 
into itself all Christian societies. 

The wish for, and the anticipation of, re-union 
have a practical bearing on policy. Nothing ought to 
be denied to Rome by England or the East which Rome 
can rightly claim in the light of Scripture and history 
and dogma, and nothing ought to be grarited to Rome 
of which Scripture and history and dogma demand 
the rejection. Sacrifices on all sides will be needed 
if the great work is to be accomplished ; but they must 
be sacrifices in which no Catholic principle is on any 
side abandoned. 

The hope of re-union has its bearing, too, on the 
appeal to authority. Authority has taken a somewhat 
different form in the East and at Rome, and again 
in the Church of England. In each of them, also, 
there have been different conceptions of freedom. 
It is important, if re-union is to be sound and lasting, 
that nothing which is of value either in the way of 
authority or in the way of freedom should be lost, 
and that nothing which is useless or hurtful should 
be retained. 

The Catholic appeal to authority is partly to the 
past. It looks back to Holy Scripture, to the doc- 
trinal statements in which the Church has drawn out 


: 


22 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


the meaning of Holy Scripture and which have been 
accepted as creeds, to the conciliar decisions which 
have been authoritatively imposed as binding on the 
whole Church, to the common teaching of representa- 
tive divines. The Catholic may not reject anything 
to which he believes that the Church as a whole is 
really committed, anything which the whole Church _ 
has made part of its permanent life. It may often be 
a difficult task to determine exactly how far the 
authority of the Church has gone, whether the decision 
of an accepted cecumenical council has been so com- 
pletely a matter of principle that it may not be altered 
or has been so entirely a detail of only temporary 
importance that it may well be changed, whether, for 
instance, any utterance is to be ranked with the affirma- 
tion of our Lord’s deity at the Council of Nicza or 
with the prohibition of kneeling during Eastertide by 
the same council, whether the concurrent teaching of 
divines through a long period of time indicates an 
actual acceptance of the teaching by the Church itself. 
But, whenever it can be determined that there has 
been a decision to which the Church as a whole is 
permanently committed, the acceptance of that deci- 
sion is obligatory. 

But, besides the appeal to the past, there is also an 
appeal to the future. The Catholic of necessity looks 
back to the past ; for in the past is the tradition which 
sustains his belief. But of necessity also he looks 
forward to the future, to the re-united Church which 
is to be, and he sees that the past will find its full: 
significance in the development which yet has to come. 
For the Church’s life is greater than of any one century, 
or of any particular series of centuries; it is for all 
time. 


CHAPTER V 
THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 


MARKED feature in Anglo-Catholic thought 

is the value assigned to the sacramental prin- 

ciple. In the sacraments material things are 
used as means of spiritual processes. This is in accord- 
ance with the use of matter in allreligion. Prayer and 
communion with God find expression by means of the 
material brain, and a further expression in the speech 
which the body makes possible. Spiritual instinct 
and thought might indeed exist without the brain or 
any organs of speech; but, at any rate in our present 
state of existence, they would be greatly limited and 
hindered. 

The Incarnation supremely illustrated the sacra- 
mental principle. It showed that, whatever the 
ravages of sin, matter had not become necessarily 
evil, had not lost the capacity of being used for good 
which God had given to it in the creation. For in 
becoming Man the eternal Son of God made the whole 
of human nature His own, and took a human body no 
less than a human soul as the dwelling place and instru- 
ment of His divine Being, indissolubly one with Him- 
self. In His body and by means of His body He lived 
and taught and worked miracles. In His body and 
by means of His body He redeemed mankind. He 
indeed received that body without taint of sin from His 


24 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


virgin mother. But His body was as really material 
as is the body of anyone of ourselves, and in the work | 
of His incarnate life He used this material body to 
accomplish the highest spiritual ends. 

As it was in the Incarnation, so it 1s in the sacra- 
ments. The end is spiritual but there are material 
means. The water of Baptism is applied by a bodily 
hand, and words are spoken by a bodily voice; and 
the soul of the baptized person receives spiritual benefit. 
In Confirmation the recipient of the sacrament is 
touched by the hand or is anointed with oil, and the 
spiritual strength of the sacrament is received. In 
the Holy Eucharist words are spoken in regard to bread 
and wine, and the bread and wine are themselves 
spiritually transformed and become means of spiritual 
grace to those who use and receive them. In Penance 
words spoken by the mouth are the instrument for 
spiritual forgiveness. In the Unction of the Sick, 
spiritual blessings are conveyed through the use of 
material oil. In Orders the laying on of hands and 
the words of the Bishop are used by the Holy Ghost 
to empower the ordained with spiritual gifts. In 
Matrimony the outward contract is so blessed by God 
that the relation of the married to one another is 
spiritual as well as bodily. 

The sacraments are not magical. Unlike the pro- 
cesses of magic, they are not used to bend an unwilling 
god to the will of the worshippers. Rather, they are 
the provision of the loving God, who wills by means of 
them to help His creatures. Unlike the processes of 
magic, they are not devised to produce mechanical 
effects in those who use them. There are indeed objec- | 
tive results. Those who are baptized or confirmed or 
ordained are and must remain baptized or confirmed 


THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 25 


or ordained persons even though there is no spiritual 
response in them to the administration of the sacra- 
ment. But the lack of spiritual desires in the case 
of an adult prevents him from being spiritually 
benefited by the sacramental gift. The consecrated 
bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ even 
if the officiating priest is faithless, and if the recipients 
are without repentance for wilful sin. But the recep- 
tion of spiritual benefit is dependent on the presence 
of right conditions in the soul. In the middle ages, 
when the insistence on the objective value of the 
sacraments was at its height, the terror of unworthy 
reception ran like a nightmare through theology and 
devotion. ‘“ Let it not be to me for judgement and 
condemnation ’”’ are words which express a thought 
constantly found and deeply felt. And, moreover, 
throughout the middle ages the notion of magic was 
rejected in the habitual teaching that, when sacramental 
communion cannot be received, all the benefits of it 
may be obtained by a communion wholly spiritual. 

The sacramental principle, then, involves the use of 
material things as means of spiritual processes in a way 
that is not magical. Another element in the principle 
is the value of priesthood. The idea of priesthood is 
very deep in human life. In ordinary affairs, one 
human being represents another, and one human 
being helps another. The State, the society, the 
family, the great man, the father, the mother, afford 
instances at every turn. In religion the same principle 
is at work. The priest is the representative of God 
to man, and the representative of man to God. The 
priest is the helper by whom the oblations of man are 
offered to God, and by whom the gifts of God are con- 
veyed to man. The priest is between man and God 


Cc 


26 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


not as one who severs or interrupts or divides but as 
one who conveys those appointed means of divine 
succour which are the stay and strength of the inner 
and unseen communion of the soul with God. Again, 
the rites are not magical. There is power in them 
which is not of man but of God. There is grace in 
them which man could not create. The power and 
the grace call out what is best in man himself. They 
make demands on his whole being and challenge the 
strength of his spiritual resources. In themselves 
always the same, their effects in those who receive 
them are proportionate to the good will and the right 
desire of the recipients. 

Further, the sacramental principle is the principle 
of society. Hebrew and Greek alike knew that it is 
not good for man to be alone, and that man is a social 
animal. Individuals realize their proper being in 
community with others. One does not stand alone, 
and he does not fall alone. He is dependent on the 
help of his fellows. He is affected both by his prede- 
cessors and by his contemporaries. There is no such 
thing as a wholly self-contained life. And the sacra- © 
ments are social. In Baptism God admits the bap- 
tized into a society. In Confirmation God strengthens 
the social relation. In Communion God unites com- 
municants with one another as well as with Himself. 
In Penance God restores the social life which sin had 
broken. In Unction, in Orders, in Matrimony, God 
treats the soul as one living and dying in the life of a 
society. There is nothing lost of that which is indi- 
vidual. Each one is as near to God and as much the 
object of His personal care as if there were no other. 
But, as in human societies, the life of the one is en- 


« 


THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 27 


riched by his union with others in the divine society 
of the Church. 

There are many analogies between the Christian 
sacraments and the Jewish rites which were their 
precursors. In particular, the Christian sacraments, 
like the Jewish rites, are symbols. But they are 
symbols of a far higher kind, of fuller significance, of 
greater power. For they are filled with the force of 
the incarnate life of the Son of God and with the 
strength of the Pentecostal gifts of the Holy Ghost. 
They are symbols with that rich meaning in which 
the word symbol was used in the ancient Church, and 
not in the bare and narrow sense given to the word 
by many Protestant divines. They effect that which 
they signify. They renew those who receive them. 
In the case of one of them, the Holy Eucharist, the 
sacrament itself is transformed. 

All this is the commonplace of Catholic theology. 
The Tractarians found the doctrine of the sacramental 
principle in Holy Scripture and in the tradition of 
the Church. This doctrine gave to their teaching its 
life and its power. The Anglo-Catholics have inherited 
the doctrine from the Tractarians. For them, as for 
the Tractarians, it takes its! place in the ordered se- 
quence of a true theology, following from the dogmas 
of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation, and leading 
on to the doctrines and the use of the separate sacra- 
ments. 

The sacramental principle is of vital importance. 

1See, e.g., K. R. Hagenbach, A History of Christian Doctrines 
(English translation, 1880), i, 286-297; A. Harnack, History of 
Dogma (English translation, 1896), ii, 144, 145: iv, 289, note 2; 
C. H. Turner in The Journal of Theological Studies, vii, 595-7 (1906) ; 


and the present writer’s A History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist 
(1909), i, 29-31, 61-67. 


28 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


Questions about the number of the sacraments have 
often been given an undue prominence. The answers 
to those questions depend on definition and terminology. 
In the ancient Church, the use of the word was so wide 
that the Incarnation itself was described as a sacra- 
ment, and that, on the other hand, the word was 
applied to the salt given to catechumens. As the use 
was narrowed, and there was a tendency to limit the 
number to seven, theologians did not at first agree as 
to the details of inclusion. From the twelfth century 
in the West, and considerably later in the East, it 
became customary to describe Baptism, Confirmation, 
the Eucharist, Penance, Unction, Orders, and Matri- 
mony as sacraments to the exclusion of other rites. 
This terminology has great and obvious convenience. 
It is in accordance with the usual practice of the East 
and the West. It groups together a set of rites which 
are akin. It makes teaching about the sacraments 
easier. It avoids the difficulties which hamper either 
a wider or a narrower use. But no Catholic theologian 
would deny great differences among the seven. Bap- 
tism and the Eucharist stand out from the rest as 
ascribed in the Gospels to the express institution of 
our Lord with visible signs attached, and as necessary 
for all Christians in a degree and to an extent to which 
other sacraments are not necessary. Differences are 
asserted between sacraments of the living, which are 
for the use of those already in grace, namely, Confirma- 
tion, the Eucharist, Unction, Orders, Matrimony, and 
sacraments of the dead, which are for those who are 
not yet in grace or who have fallen from it, namely, 
Baptism and Penance. Another line of division is 
between sacraments which confer ‘‘ character ’”’ and 
cannot be repeated, namely, Baptism, Confirmation, 


& 


THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 29 


c¢ 


Orders, and those which do not confer ‘“‘ character ”’ 
and therefore can be repeated, namely, the Eucharist, 
Penance, Unction, Matrimony. In the course of their 
study of the ancient Church and of contemporary 
Catholicism, the Tractarians came to recognize the 
sacramental nature of the seven rites; and it is the 
habitual practice of most Anglo-Catholics to speak of 
the seven sacraments, namely, the two greater, Bap- 
tism and the Eucharist, and the five less, Confirmation, 
Penance, Unction, Orders, Matrimony. 


CHARTE RioN] 
BAPTISM AND CONFIRMATION 


APTISM is the first of the sacraments. In one 
sense it is the greatest, because, though the 
sacrament of the body and blood of Christ sur- 

passes it in dignity, it is the condition for the reception 
of all other sacraments, and through it God gives the 
first and the permanent sacramental union of the 
Christian with the human nature of our Lord. As the 
first to be received, it is the gate or door of sacramental 
life, and it supplies the foundation on which the sacra- 
mental life is built. Through it the beginning of the 
covenanted Christian life of grace is made. The bap- 
tized receive at their Baptism the specifically Christian 
gifts of God. They are made members of Christ, 
they are united to Him in His human nature, they are 
incorporated in His human life. Being members of 
Him who is the eternal Son of God, they are made 
children of God; and they receive the Holy Ghost, 
by whom His human nature is indwelt. 

It is not denied that all men everywhere are children 
of God by creation, or that the Holy Ghost works 
outside the limits of the baptized, or that there are 
gifts of what theologians call ‘‘ actual grace’ in those 
who have not been brought within the covenant by 
Christian Baptism. The statements of Catholic theo- 
logy are affirmations, not denials. They are positive 


€ 


BAPTISM AND CONFIRMATION 31 


assertions of the great gifts with their distinctive value 
which are bestowed by means of Baptism. The son- 
ship by creation is raised to a nobler sonship, the work 
of the Holy Ghost has a more intimate character, 
there is “ habitual grace,’ as well as “ actual grace,” 
in the baptized. 

The connexion of Confirmation with Baptism 1s 
very close. In the ancient Church, as still in the East, 
they were administered in normal cases as two parts 
of one great rite. The Western restriction of the 
minister in Confirmation to a Bishop, while the Easterns 
were content that a presbyter should confirm with 
chrism which a Bishop had blessed, led to a separation 
of Confirmation from Baptism in the West in those 
cases in which a Bishop did not baptize. By the six- 
teenth century it had become rare in the West for 
Baptism and Confirmation to be administered at the 
same time, and for infants to be confirmed ; and the 
practice of the ancient Church was rarely maintained 
except when the child of some great person was bap- 
tized. In the sixteenth century the Church of Rome 
and the Church of England altered the law of the 
Church so as to make it conform with the custom 
which had become usual, and definitely separated 
Confirmation from Baptism, and restricted Confirma- 
tion to those who had reached years of discretion. 

The gift in Confirmation is the gift of the Holy 
Ghost. On this rudimentary statement there is general 
agreement among the Tractarians and among the 
Anglo-Catholics of to-day. But the close connexion 
of Baptism and Confirmation in early times and through 
a long period of the Church’s history makes a more 
explicit answer difficult. The discussion whether at 
Baptism the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, who then 


32 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


comes to the soul chiefly to cleanse, is bestowed, so 
that in Confirmation there is a renewal of the samein- | 
dwelling chiefly for the purposes of strengthening, or 
whether in Baptism the Holy Ghost works on the soul 
from without and does not indwell the soul till the 
administration of Confirmation, has divided many who 
in most matters are agreed. If it is the opinion of the 
present writer that on the whole the evidence from 
Holy Scripture and from tradition favours the belief 
that the soul of the baptized, even before Confirma- 
tion, possesses the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, he 
is aware that the contrary opinion is held by many 
Catholics whose learning and ability he must greatly 
respect. 

Since the sixteenth century the age at which Con- 
firmation has been administered in the Church of 
England has in a large majority of cases been greater 
than that at which it has usually been administered 
in the Church of Rome, and the tendency in the rules 
made by the Bishops has been to prevent the Confirma- 
tion of any who have not reached the age of at least 
twelve or thirteen years. Different reasons have led 
Anglo-Catholics to regret, and in some cases to resist, 
this tendency. The unprimitive character of the 
practice by which both the Church of Rome and the 
Church of England have refused Confirmation to 
infants has been more fully realized. It has become 
better understood that the Church of England, in re- 
quiring the confirmed to have come to years of discre- 
tion and to be able to say the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, 
and the Ten Commandments, and to be instructed in 
the Church Catechism, does not order an age anything 
like so old as thirteen ; and that in the Church of Rome 
children of seven years old are habitually confirmed 


4 


BAPTISM AND CONFIRMATION 33 


without any apparent ill results. The experience of 
parish priests and the researches of scientific educa- 
tionalists have concurred to show that the practical 
advantages of the younger age are great. Hence, 
Anglo-Catholics in general are strongly in favour of 
an age for Confirmation much younger than that 
which is usual in the Church of England, though it 
is not likely that more than a few of them agree with 
the present writer in his opinion that the departure 
of the Church of England and the Church of Rome 
from the practice of the ancient Church by postponing 
Confirmation is unjustifiable. Speaking for himself 
alone, he must express his belief that it would be 
easier to justify at the bar of Scripture and history 
and reason either the administration of both Baptism 
and Confirmation to infants or the postponement of 
both till years of discretion than the present method 
of the Roman Catholic or the English Church. 


CHAPTER VII 
THE MASS 


N the transformation of worship which has taken 
I place in the English Church during the last hundred 

years the most noticeable and the most important 
changes are in regard to the Holy Eucharist. And an 
outsider who should study the notice boards or visit 
the services of an Anglo-Catholic church might quickly 
infer that in this service he would see what those in 
charge of the church regarded as the chief part of 
their worship. : 

A hundred years ago it was very rare for the Holy 
Eucharist to be celebrated every Sunday; in some 
churches the celebration was once a month; in many 
it was less often. For the celebration of it many who 
had been present at the Morning Prayer and Litany 
and Ante-Communion service left the church, and 
only those who were intending to communicate re- 
mained. It was celebrated without external signs of 
dignity. To all this the Anglo-Catholic church of 
to-day supplies the greatest possible contrast. The 
word Mass is freely used. Mass is celebrated, or there 
are more Masses than one, every day. The solemn 
High Mass, or, when ministers for that are not avail- 
able, a Mass sung without deacon and sub-deacon, 
is the chief service on Sundays. In addition to this, 
when there are sufficient priests, there are Low Masses 


THE MASS 35 


at various times. While communicants are many, 
there are many also who are present without at the 
time communicating. Everything that can add ex- 
ternal dignity and beauty to the service is used. 

This great difference has been reached through a 
long process. The earlier Tractarians promoted greater 
frequency of celebrations and more comely methods 
of worship. As the Tractarian movement became less 
academical and more parochial, changes rapidly took 
place, through which the present state of affairs has 
been reached. 

During the different stages of this process the reason 
for the changes which have been made has been always 
the same. Behind ceremony there has been doctrine. 
The Eucharistic vestments—the amice, alb, girdle, 
maniple, stole, chasuble—afford a convenient instance. 
The use of them has been restored, partly because it 
was believed that this use was in obedience to the 
directions of the Book of Common Prayer, and partly 
because these vestments illustrated the continuity of 
the present English Church with the pre-Reformation 
English Church, but much more because they were 
felt to be an outward sign that in fundamental doctrine 
the Church of England to-day is at one with the rest 
of the Catholic Church in the past and in the present.’ 

The teaching of Eucharistic doctrine, which had 
almost vanished out of the English Church, was a large 
part of the work accomplished by the Tractarians. 
They accepted and kept all that was of positive value 
‘in what they received from earlier times. The sense 

4 The retention of some of the vestments by Lutherans probably 
was not known to most of those who were earliest in restoring the 
use of the vestments in the Church of England. When it was 


known, it was regarded as a mere survival, not affecting what was 
felt, as mentioned above. 


36 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


of the awe which surrounded the Holy Sacrament, 
the recognition of the great responsibilities involved 
in receiving it, the conviction that special preparation 
must precede and special thanksgiving must follow 
the reception whenever these were possible, the belief 
that in the Holy Communion the devout soul made 
remembrance of the death of Christ and was very 
near to God,—all this they inherited from pious parents 
or teachers or from the devotional literature of the 
English Church. This attitude had remained in many 
English churchpeople when the doctrine which sup- 
ported the devotion had been well nigh lost. The 
Tractarians brought back the doctrine. They taught 
that the bread and wine are made to be the body and 
blood of Christ by the consecration, and that the 
Eucharist is a sacrifice. By their doctrinal teaching 
they supplied a fuller justification for the devotion 
which had already existed, and they carried it further 
and gave it new forms. At first the doctrines of the 
real presence and the Eucharistic sacrifice were re- 
ceived and taught chiefly because the authority of 
Scripture and of the Church was seen to demand 
them. Other reasons for them—their congruity with 
the Incarnation, their harmony with the rest of Chris- 
tian thought, their place in the sacramental system— 
were gradually realized. Fresh considerations—the 
spiritual character of our Lord’s risen body and there- 
fore of His body in the Eucharist, a wider conception 
of sacrifice as dedication which might involve death 
but did not necessarily require death or destruction, 
a fuller recognition of our Lord’s heavenly priesthood 
—came in to support it. The holding of the belief 
led on to much in practice. Those who believed that 
the Eucharist is the sacrifice of Christ and that in it is 


THE MASS 37 


the sacramental presence of Christ wished to restore the 
Eucharist to the place from which it had been 
deposed, the central place in Christian worship. They 
aimed at surrounding it with all possible adjuncts of 
dignity. Those who believed that the communicant 
receives the very body of Christ Himself desired that 
the reception should be, as the Church from its early 
days had taught, the first food in the day. They 
recognized that the communicant must come to the 
holy gift with a cleansed soul. 

So, bit by bit, and stage by stage, the Mass came to 
have the place which it now holds, and to be given 
the surroundings which it now possesses, in Anglo- 
Catholic churches. There has been the logical and prac- 
tical development which is the natural result of the 
Tractarian belief. 

The main features of the Eucharistic doctrine taught 
by the Tractarians are the common inheritance of 
Anglo-Catholics. There cannot be surprise that on 
so mysterious a subject there have been some differences 
among Anglo-Catholics, as there were among the 
Tractarians themselves. One such difference may be 
seen in the attitude towards the word Transubstantia- 
tion. The technical doctrine described by the word 
Transubstantiation was developed by the Western 
Schoolmen of the middle ages in their attempt at the 
same time to preserve the doctrine that the consecrated 
sacrament is the body and blood of Christ, to keep 
this doctrine free from a carnal view of our Lord’s 
presence, and to make Eucharistic belief harmonious 
with the philosophy of their day. There was much 
to support, and much which was contrary to, this 
doctrine in the writings of the fathers; but it was 
rather as a result of logical reasoning than in conse- 


38 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


quence of authority that the Schoolmen systematized 
it. In this work the aim of the Schoolmen—to guard | 
tradition, to maintain valuable belief, to avoid carnal 
views, to reconcile theology and philosophy—was 
good, and for the time their attempt had much success. 
But changes in current philosophy have affected the 
value of their work, and the explanations which were 
intended to support Eucharistic doctrine have proved 
a hindrance rather than a help. The chief point 
affirmed in Transubstantiation, namely, that the sub- 
stances—that is, the essential being—of bread and wine 
are so converted into the body and blood of Christ 
that in the consecrated sacrament these substances of 
bread and wine no longer exist, had been declared in 
earlier official utterances and was made a matter of 
faith for Roman Catholics by the Council of Trent 
in the sixteenth century. A similar doctrine was 
accepted by the Greek Church at the Council of Beth- 
lehem in 1672 and with certain modifications intended 
to avoid Western technicalities by the Russian Church 
in 1838. Among Anglo-Catholics there are some for 
whom Transubstantiation has its attractions, while 
to others it appears to attach insufficient importance 
to the outward part of the sacrament and to embarrass 
theology by dependence on a particular philosophy 
not now usually held. There is no reason that some 
difference of opinion on this point should cause division. 
What is theologically and devotionally important is 
the positive truth that the consecrated sacrament is 
the body and blood of Christ, not whether the sub- 
- stances or essential being of bread and wine do or do 
not remain after the consecration. Hardly any, if 
any, theologians at the present time hold a theory of 
Transubstantiation to which serious religious objection 


€ 


THE MASS 39 


can be made. To the present writer there are reasons 
which appear to him weighty against the acceptance 
of the word or the doctrine of Transubstantiation, but 
the reasons are historical and philosophical rather than 
theological or religious. 

Differences, again, may be found among Anglo- 
Catholics in regard to some aspects of the Eucharistic 
sacrifice. Some desire to concentrate their attention 
on the upper room and the cross; to others the union 
with our Lord’s offering of Himself in heaven is even 
more than the commemoration of His passion and 
death. There are differences, moreover, whether most 
prominence is to be given to the thought that the 
consecration is effected by the priest acting in the 
name of Christ and as the representative of the Church 
or to the belief that in response to the prayer of the 
priest and the Church the consecration takes place by 
the operation of the Holy Ghost. Questions such as 
these need not divide those who concur in holding the 
great positive truths which are so full of meaning that 
different ways of explaining them supplement and do 
not contradict one another, and however fully ex- 
pressed fail to be exhaustive. 

The development of the ceremonial which surrounds 
the Mass has passed beyond anything of which the 
earliest Tractarians dreamed. If one can imagine 
some of them present to-day at the High Mass in a 
church where the ceremonial is the most elaborate 
and ornate, one may suppose that the impressions 
made would not be by any means the same for all. 
For all indeed there might be at first such astonish- 
ment and perplexity as may be felt by an Eastern 
Christian with no knowledge of the West if he is 
present at a Low Mass in a Roman Catholic or English 


40 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


church, or by a Western hitherto unaccustomed to 
the East if he sees the gorgeous pomp of the Eastern - 
Liturgy. For some the perplexity might long remain. 
For others there might be the sense that here was the 
true outcome of what they believed, here was what they 
desired to see widely spread. For others the feeling 
might rather be a longing for a severe simplicity, an 
austerity, a quietness which they failed to find in a 
worship of outward splendour. The imagination of 
such impressions, if the earliest Tractarians could visit 
some of our churches to-day, may serve to illustrate 
a truth. There are certain principles of order, certain 
methods of worship, certain fixity of ceremonial, which 
Anglo-Catholics wish all who agree with them 
systematically and punctiliously to adopt. These 
make an atmosphere and suggest truths which they 
believe to be Catholic, and at once aid the acceptance 
of right belief and promote real devotion. But it 
cannot in the least be wished that elaboration of worship 
should be to the same extent in every church. What is 
fitting in one church may be most unsuitable in another. 
The principles of ceremonial should receive embodi- 
ment sometimes in the simplest, sometimes in the 
most ornate, fashion. 

There has been discussion—the importance of which 
has often been exaggerated—as to the sources from 
which some details of ceremonial should be derived. 
In the earliest days of the restoration of ceremonial 
it was natural that the use of colours and other sur- 
roundings of worship should be based on the existing. 
customs of the Roman Catholic Church. In the direc- 
tions of the Roman Missal and in the practice of 
European churches there was a model ready to hand © 
which could easily be followed. Later, there were 


THE MASS 4X 


some who felt that the methods of the pre-Reformation 
English Church were in themselves better and had a 
stronger claim on English churchpeople than those 
of the present Roman Catholic Church. Later again, 
a plea was made that loyalty to the rubrics of the Book 
of Common Prayer required a form of ceremonial 
which has been described as the “‘ English Use.’’ What 
is chiefly to be regretted about these divergencies is 
that they have tended to make divisions among friends, 
and to that extent have done harm. The sympathies 
of the present writer are all with the adoption of the 
colours and methods of ceremonial which are charac- 
teristic of the Roman Catholic Church of to-day. These 
colours and methods—which are the outcome of long ex- 
perience—seem to him simpler and more practical and 
more instructive than those dictated by the other 
systems; and he values more than he can easily 
express anything, which can rightly be adopted in 
the Church of England, which may lessen differences 
from and promote similarities to the Church of Rome. 
But the different methods may well go on side by 
side at any rate fora time; and the whole question 
is one which calls for reasonable and considerate judge- 
ment and a tolerant spirit and a frank recognition 
that divergencies of this kind ought not to cause the 
smallest bitterness of temper or the slightest division. 

One effect of the teaching and ceremonial which have 
resulted from the Oxford Movement has been a great 
increase in frequency of Communion. The weekly 
Communions which the Tractarians valued have be- 
come the practice of a greatly increased number ; and 
many devout persons receive the Holy Communion on 
several days of the week, or daily. Side by side with 
this, priests have been led to desire more frequently 


D 


42 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


to exercise their office in saying Mass, and many make 
a practice of celebrating every day. There are dangers, 
of course, if frequency either of Communion or of cele- 
brating should lead to carelessness or formality, or if 
the wish to say Mass should lead a priest to abstain 
from Communion if on any occasion he has not the 
opportunity of celebrating. Such dangers must accom- 
pany all great privileges. But the increased frequency 
itself is a subject for profound thankfulness. For 
the true life of a Christian is a Eucharistic life, in 
which through the reception of the sacrament he 
holds continuous communion with our Lord; and, 
though the continuity might remain unbroken if for 
long periods of time he were necessarily separated 
from sacramental Communion, it is best maintained 
by frequent receiving of the sacrament itself. 

The doctrine of the Eucharistic sacrifice carries with 
it that the Mass is not only for Communion. It may 
be pleaded as an offering even by those who at the 
time of a particular offering are not making their 
Communion. Consequently, both at Low Mass and | 
at High Mass, both on weekdays and on Sundays, the 
sacrifice is offered by those who do not then communi- 
cate. If they are regular and faithful communicants, 
they offer in the power of their membership in Christ 
strengthened and enkindled by their continuous com- 
munion with our Lord. If they make their Communion 
at times but are irregular or careless, they still have 
such continuity of sacramental life as their irregularity 
or carelessness has left to them. If they are baptized 
but not yet communicants, they can use the member- 
ship in Christ afforded by their Baptism. If they. 
have lapsed from Communion, they may make the most 
of such Eucharistic life as remains. The liberality 


THE MASS 43 


of the Church opens wide its doors in the hope that, 
imperfect as the offering of some may be, all will attain 
so far as for the moment they can, and none will be 
hindered in depth and height of devotion because 
there are others whose prayers are less complete. 

In the great sacrifice the Church offers the body 
and blood of our Lord. The offering of His body and 
blood is the pleading of His whole human life. His 
conception by His virgin mother, His life as a child 
living but not yet born, His birth and infancy and 
childhood and youth and manhood, His ministry and 
passion and death, the stay of His body in the tomb 
‘and of His soul in the unseen world, His resurrection, 
His sojourning on earth in His risen life, His ascen- 
sion and session at the right hand of the Father on 
high,—all these have their place in the prayers with 
which the pleading is made. And this majestic sacri- 
fice is offered for the manifold needs of mankind. It 
is offered for saints and for sinners, for the faithful and 
the tempted and the backsliding and the apostate, 
for the work of the Church all over the world, for 
nations and statesmen and kings and subjects, for 
societies and individuals, for the needs of capital and 
of labour, for family and household and friends, for 
the living and the dead. In it joy and sorrow, toil 
and conflict and rest, health and sickness and death, 
are gathered up into the one offering of Christ. The 
priest at the altar, and the people of God in the con- 
gregation, make the truth of the familiar words their 
own: “‘ Mindful of Thy venerable passion I approach 
Thine altar, sinner though I be, to offer to Thee the 
sacrifice which Thou hast instituted and commanded 
to be offered in commemoration of Thee for our salva- 
tion. Receive it, I pray, O God most high, for Thy 


44 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


holy Church, and for the people whom Thou hast 
purchased with Thy blood. . ..I offer, O Lord, if - 
Thou wilt deign mercifully to behold, the trials of the 
poor, the perils of nations, the groans of prisoners, 
the sadness of orphans, the needs of travellers, the 
want of the weak, the disheartenment of the sick, 
the failing of the old, the aspirations of the young, 
the vows of virgins, the sorrows of widows.” 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE RESERVED SACRAMENT 
HE thought of reserving the holy sacrament 
of the body and blood of Christ does not 
appear to have occurred to the Tractarians in 
the earliest days of the Movement. It would inevi- 
tably be suggested as soon as the study of the ancient 
and medizval Church, of the Non-jurors, and of con- 
temporary Catholicism outside the Church of England, 
had made much progress, and when practical questions 
concerning the giving of Communion were being faced. 
But the actual practice of reservation was not, so far 
as is known, begun for some time; and it was long 
before it became prominent or wide-spread. If the 
beginning of the Oxford Movement is placed in the 
year 1833, the earliest instance of reservation of which 
the present writer has been able to hear was more 
than twenty years after the beginning, and for many 
years later reservation probably was rare and to some 
extent secret. 

The evidence about the administration of Holy 
Communion in the early Church to those present at 
the celebration and to those absent from it is scanty. 
But it is clear that provision was made for the absent. 
The account of Church rites given by St. Justin Martyr, 
writing at Rome in the middle of the second century, 
records that the consecrated sacrament was carried 


46 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


to those who were not present at the service. Later 
writers show that in the third and fourth centuries 
the sick and others could receive the Holy Communion 
from the sacrament which was reserved, sometimes 
in private houses, sometimes in the priest’s house, 
sometimes in the church. There are occasional in- 
stances in the first five centuries, each of them for 
some special reason, of Communion being given by 
means of celebration in a place other than the ap- 
pointed place of worship; but the normal method of 
giving Communion to the sick and absent was by means 
of the reserved sacrament. 

The custom of reservation continued through the 
later patristic period and through the middle ages 
both in the East and in the West. It was recognized 
as being part of the ordinary provision for the ad- 
ministration of the sacraments which the parish priest 
in the performance of his habitual duty was bound 
to make. 

The course of events in the sixteenth and later cen- 
turies led to the custom in the Church of England being 
the opposite to that which had been usual in the early 
Church. In the early Church the sick and others 
were usually communicated from the sacrament which 
had been consecrated in the place of worship, and only 
in occasional instances from the sacrament consecrated 
in a private house. In the Church of England after 
the middle of the sixteenth century, the most usual, 
and then for a time the almost invariable, method of 
giving Communion to the sick was by means of a cele- 
bration in a private house. The Prayer Book of 1549 
and the Latin Prayer Book of 1560 made provision for . 
the sick being communicated either by the sacrament 
carried from the church or by means of a celebration 


THE RESERVED SACRAMENT 47 


in the sick person’s house; but the Prayer Books of 
1552, 1558, 1604, and 1661 made mention only of the 
celebration in the sick person’s house; and the methods 
of carrying the sacrament from the celebration in church 
and of reserving the sacrament, though not prohibited, 
fell into disuse. The disuse of reservation would be 
encouraged by the language of the twenty-eighth of 
the Articles of Religion, which, though carefully worded 
so as not actually to condemn reservation, stated that 
“the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was not by 
Christ’s ordinance reserved,” that is, reservation was 
not part of what Christ Himself had commanded at 
the institution of the sacrament. And the rubric 
inserted in 1661 with the object of preventing the 
abuse of the consecrated sacrament being treated as 
ordinary bread and wine—‘‘if any remain of that 
which was consecrated, it shall not be carried out of 
the church, but the priest and such other of the com- 
municants as he shall then call unto him shall, imme- 
diately after the blessing, reverently eat and drink 
the same ’’—possibly helped to confirm the disuse 
of reservation. It is obvious that this was not the 
intention of those who inserted the rubric. The con- 
text in the rubric and a statement by Bishop Cosin? 
show clearly that the object was to prevent pro- 
fanation; the practice of reservation was not in 
view at the time; and the phraseology of the rubric 
was based on language from a canon which had been in 
operation when reservation was the recognized and 
universal custom of the Church. Still, when the 

1 See Cosin’s Works in Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology, V, 519. 

2 Decret. 3 (de consecr.). dist. 2. cap. 23, ‘‘ Quod si remanserint 
in crastinum non reserventur sed cum timore et tremore clericorum 


diligentia consumantur.’’ Cf. Lyndwood, Provinciale, 3, 26, ‘‘ Pres- 
byter semper habebit Eucharistiam paratam propter infirmantes : 


48 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


purpose of the rubric had been forgotten, it was not 
unnatural that those who did not know the history 
of the phraseology used in it should understand it as 
inconsistent with reservation. 

Thus, when the insistence by the Tractarians on the 
doctrine about the Eucharist which they taught, 
and their emphasis on the value of Communion, had 
begun to tell, practical questions which had long slept 
were stirred. The current practice of the English 
Church, with its serious departure from the methods 
both of the ancient and of the medizval Church, did 
not help those who were desirous of giving effect to 
the consequences of the Tractarian teaching. They 
were faced by a position not without complications. 
On the one hand there was much to encourage those 
who wished to restore reservation. There was their 
strong sense of the needs which might thereby be met. 
There were the natural inferences to be drawn from the 
immemorial duty of the priest to provide the reserved 
sacrament, a duty which appeared to be inherent in 
the charge of souls, and not to have depended on any 
privilege granted by a bishop or a council. There was 
the recognition of this duty in canons—some of them 
English—which had never been repealed. There was 
the absence of any prohibition of reservation in the 
formularies of the Church of England. And there 
was the inherited custom of reservation in the Scottish 


de conse. di. 2 c. Presbyter. Nec obstat eo d. c. tribus ubi prohibetur 
hostias plures in altari dimissas reservare quia verum est quod 
non debent reservari ad opus consecrantium sed ad opus morien- 
tium sic ut ibi no. per fo. See also Notes and collections on the Book 
of Common Prayer, series 1 (wrongly assigned to Cosin), in Library 
of Anglo-Catholic Theology, Cosin’s Works, V, 121; T. W. Perry, 
Some Historical Considerations relating to the Declaration on Kneeling 
(1863), pp. 122, 123; C. Atchley (1899) quoted in Hierurgia Angh- 
cana (new edition, 1903), ii, 164, 165; W. H. Frere, A new history 
of the Book of Common Prayer (1901), p. 502, note I. 


THE RESERVED SACRAMENT 49 


Church. On the other hand, there was the long disuse 
of the practice in the English Church, and a wide- 
spread, if somewhat vague, opinion that it was unlawful. 

Some seventy years ago individual priests began to 
reserve the Blessed Sacrament; and by a progress 
at first slow and of late greatly accelerated the practice 
of reservation has increased until at the present time 
the number of churches in which it has been adopted 
is very great. It will be convenient to set out plainly 
the reasons because of which Anglo-Catholics reserve 
the Blessed Sacrament and value such reservation. 

The primary purpose for which the Blessed Sacra- 
ment is reserved is to promote Communion. Ex- 
perience has shown the importance of the sacrament 
being always at hand for the Communion of the sick 
and the dying. There are sudden emergencies in which 
the Communion of the dying is difficult or impossible 
if the reserved sacrament is not accessible. In many 
cases the administration of Communion from the re- 
served sacrament with a short service of prayer is more 
suitable for sick persons than the physically trying 
celebration, and is greatly preferred by many of them. 
In a large parish, the sick can be given more frequent 
Communion, and a larger number of sick persons can 
be communicated at the time of the great festivals, 
if there is reservation. The practical advantages of 
using the reserved sacrament for the sick and dying 
are very great. 

There are many both in country and in town parishes 
for whom access to the church at the ordinary times of 
celebrations is very difficult. Both in town and in 
country there are classes of persons who have never 
been communicants, or have ceased to be so, not 
because of any hostility to religion or any disbelief 


50 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


in the sacrament, but because the exigencies of their 
occupations hinder or prevent their attendance at > 
the celebration in church. There is a limit everywhere 
to the extent to which the number of celebrations can 
be multiplied, and in parishes where there is only 
one priest this limit is very soon reached. This diffi- 
culty, which is felt acutely by many parochial clergy- 
men, may be solved if at convenient hours Communion 
can be given in the church from the reserved sacrament 
to those who cannot come at the times of the celebra- 
tions. 

Moreover, if the priest is able on fitting occasions to 
administer from the reserved sacrament to the com- 
municants during the celebration the relief from some 
practical difficulties is great, and the doctrinal and 
devotional value of thus linking on one celebration 
with another is not small. 

The gain for promoting Communion which is supplied 
by reservation amply justifies the long and primitive 
tradition of the Church in reserving the sacrament. 

The importance of the Blessed Sacrament being 
constantly reserved in the church does not end with 
Communion. Experience has shown that, where there 
is reservation, churches are far more used for private 
prayer. Both in the Church of Rome and in the 
Church of England the reserved sacrament makes a 
centre for meditation, for intercession, for prayer of 
many kinds; it supplies, more satisfactorily and more 
adequately, the need which has been met in a different 
way by the ikons in the East. 

Some kind of common devotion in connexion with 
the reserved sacrament has been added to the private 
prayers of individuals in many English churches. 
For this addition there has been precedent in customs 


THE RESERVED SACRAMENT BI 


which have long been used in the Western Church. 
Processions of the Host existed in England in the 
eleventh century, and continued to be part of the 
recognized worship of the Church. Exposition and 
Benediction—the placing of the sacrament outside the 
tabernacle and the blessing of the people by the priest 
making the sign of the cross with the sacrament—began 
about the fifteenth century’ and became more usual in 
the Church of Rome after the Counter-Reformation in 
the sixteenth. In the English revival which resulted 
from the Tractarian Movement there have been occas- 
ional instances of Benediction and Exposition and of 
Processions of the Host since about the year 1855 ; and 
at the present time there are a few churches in which 
these are found. Of late years what have come to be 
known as “‘ Devotions ’’—a form of service in which 
the reserved sacrament is a centre for worship but in 
which there is no actual Exposition or Benediction 
—have been largely used, and have been found to be 
both of much attractiveness and of real spiritual help. 
In all that relates to worship surrounding the reserved 
sacrament the Anglo-Catholics of to-day have gone 
far beyond anything that was usual among the Trac- 
1 References to Exposition in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 
are frequent. As to Benediction, the present writer said in his 
The Reserved Sacrament (1917), pp. 73-75, that as a formal ceremony 
it probably is not older than the second half of the sixteenth century. 
After the publication of that book, however, Father H. Thurston 
in The Month for September, 1918, pp. 219-221, called attention to a 
probable allusion in the record of the Council held at London in 1309, 
and to aclear reference by Felix Hemerli, who died about 1460, in his 
treatise de benedictionibus aure cum sacramento faciendis (see varie 
oblectationis opuscula, 1497, signature r 2 verso, r 3 recto). Hemerli 
refers to Benediction incidentally as an illustration of his argument 
as if it was well known and recognized in Germany and Switzerland. 
That it was not practised till the sixteenth century in France has 


been thought to be shown by J. B. Thiers, Traité de Vexposition du 
saint sacrement (1679). 


52 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


tarians. The austerity, the self-suppression, the dis- 
like of any external show, the fear of outward attrac- 
tions, which were among the most characteristic 
features of the Tractarians, were in a different direc- 
tion from much in the worship which of late has 
surrounded the reserved sacrament, as indeed they 
were contrary to many other elements of worship in 
the Church of England to-day. The Church of Eng- 
land as a whole has departed much from the love of 
retirement, the desire for silence, the seeking to be 
unknown, the hatred of advertisement, which the 
Tractarians cherished. In all this there is loss as 
well as gain, but also gain as well as loss; and it 
inevitably affects methods of worship. In considering 
the relation of the Anglo-Catholics of the twentieth 
century to the Tractarians of the middle of the nine- 
teenth century, the important question is not about 
methods but about principles. 

There were temporary differences among some of 
the Tractarians on the subject of Eucharistic adora- 
tion. All ultimately realized that the doctrine of our 
Lord’s presence in the consecrated sacrament requires 
that in the sacrament He is to be adored. The impli- 
cations of this truth cannot in the long run be limited 
to the time of the celebration. The notion that the 
sacramental presence of our Lord remains during the 
actual time of the celebration but ceases if the sacra- 
ment is reserved after the celebration has no support 
from authority or reason, and cannot make a lasting 
appeal. The doctrine of the real presence, as Dr. 
Pusey and Mr. Keble taught it, leads on inevitably 
to the belief that, if the sacrament is reserved, our 
Lord is still there with His sacramental presence, and 
still is to be adored. To say Adoro te devote to our 


THE RESERVED SACRAMENT 53 


Lord at the consecration in the Mass, and to say the 
same words to Him when kneeling before the reserved 
sacrament, is in principle the same act of devotion. 

No distinction can rightly be made between private 
and public prayer in regard to what is lawful in prin- 
ciple. There may be distinctions as to what is expe- 
dient. Considerations of expediency may govern a 
good deal in the details of worship. But no such 
consideration can affect the truth that, if it is right 
for one person individually to worship our Lord in 
the reserved sacrament, it is also right for a number 
of persons to do so together; and, if it is right for 
one person or more persons than one so to worship 
our Lord in silence, it is also right for them so to 
worship Him with prayers and hymns in common 
and aloud. Whatever considerations of various kinds 
may dictate as to details of worship, the adoration of 
our Lord in the reserved sacrament by congregations 
follows from the adoration of Him at the time of Mass. 

It is the belief of Anglo-Catholics that, in accor- 
dance with the tradition of the Catholic Church, it is 
the duty of the parish priest to reserve the sacrament 
in his parish church. They have no wish that this 
traditional duty should be imposed on those who do 
not agree with them. KRather, they would deprecate 
reservation by those whose beliefs would not justify 
them in reserving, or in surrounding the reserved 
sacrament with those outward signs of reverence and 
devotion which are its due. But history shows that 
the parish priest may fulfil this duty on his own initia- 
tive without seeking the leave of his bishop. 

There are many matters in regard to the reserved 
sacrament about which the control of the bishop may 
be exercised. Formal services in connexion with it, 


54 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


like all other services not contained in the Book of 
Common Prayer, are subject to episcopal control, 
though the moral appeal of this control is greatly 
lessened by two facts,—first, the rarity of bishops 
seeking the advice of their diocesan synods before 
making decisions, and, secondly, the toleration of a 
state of affairs in which there probably is no church 
in England where the Prayer Book is exactly and 
completely obeyed. The duty of the parish priest to 
reserve in his parish church does not confer on him 
or on others a right to reserve in private chapels, 
reservation in which, as a special privilege distinct 
from the ordinary provision for the faithful, needs the 
leave of the bishop. 

The theological justification for the devotional use 
of the reserved sacrament does not stand alone. This 
devotional use has been found in practice to be a means 
of deepening the spiritual life, and strengthening the 
spiritual energies, of faithful souls. To such it has 
supplied joy and comfort and resolution. And not 
seldom it has helped those to whom religion was strange 
to find their way into a right use of the ministrations 
of the Church. 

It has sometimes been maintained that the devo- 
tional use of the reserved sacrament diverts the atten- 
tion of the soul from the worship of God in heaven, 
and lessens the power of the continuous communion 
of the soul with our Lord in the inner life. This 
objection is of so serious a character that the two 
parts of it call for separate and careful consideration. 

It is objected, then, that by worshipping our Lord 
in the reserved sacrament the capacity of the soul for 
the worship of God in heaven is made less. Such an 
objection really ignores the place both of the Incarna- 


THE RESERVED SACRAMENT 58 


tion and of the sacraments in Christian life. It is 
indeed true that God is everywhere, and that man 
can speak to Him and worship Him everywhere. 
There is an approach to God which can be made by 
heathen or Moslem or Jew or Christian independently 
of place or outward circumstance. In this approach 
there may be the true spirit of prayer and worship, 
and no one may doubt its value. It is the foundation 
in natural religion on which revealed religion may 
build. The Incarnation made possible a new approach 
whereby man with added security and fresh enlighten- 
ment and greater power might draw near to God in 
response as God drew near to him. The sacraments 
united Christians individually and corporately with 
God through the human nature of our Lord by a union 
more intimate and powerful than any approach to 
God had hitherto been. But neither Incarnation nor 
sacraments destroyed or lessened the communion of 
the soul with God which had been before them. 
Rather, they enhanced it and gave it new force. All 
that had been without them remained, but remained 
with a value essentially increased. Not otherwise, 
the worship of our Lord in the reserved sacrament does 
not take away the capacity for communion with Him 
and the Father and the Holy Ghost at other times. 
The Christian leaves the church where he has been 
worshipping our Lord in the reserved sacrament, and 
he carries with him into the world an increased power 
of realizing everywhere and always the presence of 
God. 

In sacramental Communion the Christian receives 
the body and blood—the human life now spiritual 
and glorious—of our Lord. This gift bestows abiding 
union with our Lord on the soul. The communicant 


56 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


treasures that union as his constant support and joy. 
It sustains him in many times of temptation and trial — 
and pain. It is a strength which lasts. There is no 
inconsistency if the communicant from time to time 
seeks the presence of the Lord where the sacrament 
is reserved. As Communion itself deepens and 
strengthens the communing with God which may be 
without it, so the visit to our Lord in the reserved 
sacrament renews and freshens the sense of the inner 
union which Communion has bestowed as a lasting 
gift. 

There is a great progress of spiritual life. Atnoone 
stage does the worshipper of God deny his past. All 
that is of value before the Incarnation or outside 
Christianity is preserved by the Christian with the new 
life which the Christian religion supplies. The sacra- 
mental union vitalizes all the good which there might 
be without it. The worship of our Lord in the reserved 
sacrament strengthens our hold on His presence within 
our souls, and it gives new reality to our recognition 
of the presence and work of God throughout the created 
world. 


CHAPTER IX 


CONFESSION 


tarians is their sense of the awful nature of 

sin. Their thought was coloured by the recog- 
nition of sin as a dire offence against the majesty of 
God, and as having deeply affected human life. The 
horror of it was to be estimated not only by its terrible 
results in human character and the fearful penalties 
which sinners might incur, but also and chiefly by the 
cost of forgiveness in the sufferings and death of our 
Lord. For the Christian, indeed, the redemption 
accomplished by Christ was brought home individually 
by means of Baptism ; in Baptism sin was pardoned ; 
in Baptism was newness of life. But after Baptism 
there might be, and as a normal experience there 
actually is, further sin. And the sin after Baptism 
has a new enormity, because it is against grace which 
has been received. 

The consideration of sin gave the gloomy aspect 
which is seen in much of the earlier Tractarian teach- 
ing. The need of comfort was strongly felt. One 
part of the comfort was found in the Holy Eucharist. 
Another part was in the use of Confession. 

The restoration of Confession was due to a con- 
currence of causes. The gravity of post-baptismal 
sin, the conviction that a forgiveness by sacramental 


E 


ite most marked characteristic of the Trac- 


58 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


means should renew the life which the sacrament of 
Baptism had conveyed, the traditional use of Penance 
in the Church, and the provision of Confession and 
Absolution by the English Church in the Prayer Book, 
all pointed in the same direction. The Tractarians 
themselves had recourse to Confession; and they 
suggested it to their disciples. 

The penitential system of the early Church, at first 
chiefly public, afterwards chiefly private, was partly 
a means of outward reconciliation and partly a 
means for applying the meritorious passion and death 
of our Lord to individual souls for the forgiveness of 
their sins. The purpose of this authority given to the 
Church by our Lord, was not primarily spiritual advice 
or the advance in goodness of those who were remain- 
ing faithful. The authority was used, as it had been 
instituted, for dealing with sin. To receive counsel, 
and to be helped in spiritual progress, confessions 
were made to monks and others independently of the 
penitential system. During the middle ages and in 
the Roman Catholic Church after the sixteenth century 
the hearing of confessions with a view to giving Absolu- 
tion and the receiving of confidences with a view to 
giving advice were to a large extent combined; and 
the sacrament of Penance came to be used not only 
for its original purpose as a means of receiving for- 
giveness for grave sin but also as a method of making 
advance in goodness through the confession and ab- 
solution of all kinds of faults and through the advice 
of a spiritual counsellor. 

The successive editions of the English Prayer Book 
continued to make provision for Confession, and 
occasional instances of the use of Confession long 
after the sixteenth century are known. Early in the 


CONFESSION 59 


nineteenth century the probability is that it was 
hardly used at all, and that the references to it in the 
Prayer Book were, with very rare exceptions, ignored. 
In the Tractarian revival the primary object was, as 
in the ancient Church, to use a means for the forgive- 
ness of post-baptismal sin, and a secondary object— 
the reception of counsel—was closely linked with it. 
A striking instance is afforded by the history of the 
first confession made by Dr. Pusey. The object with 
which the confession was made was to receive for- 
giveness, but he took with him a proposed rule of life 
in order that he might receive the advice of his confessor 
about it. And in his subsequent habitual use of Con- 
fession the two objects were still combined. 

To enter an Anglo-Catholic church to-day is to ob- 
serve the opportunities afforded for Confession. Notices 
may be seen announcing the frequent times at which 
priests are in church to hear confessions; there are 
confessional boxes or some similar arrangements for 
the hearing of confessions. 

In some respects the Anglo-Catholic teaching about 
Confession is identical with that of the Tractarians. 
The object of Confession is that the forgiveness won 
by our Lord in His passion and death may be applied 
to the soul by the sacramental means which He ap- 
pointed. Its rightful use and the fulfilment of the 
promise attached to it demand that the penitent has 
repentance and faith, and that it is his desire to fight 
against and overcome sin. Existing primarily for the 
forgiveness of grave sins, which have separated the 
soul from God and interrupted the due operation of 
the grace received in Baptism, it may be used as a 
means of bringing all kinds of less sins to God in peni- 
tence. Spiritual advice, though not the object of the 


60 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


sacrament, may well be given in connexion with it. 
The use of Confession at some great crisis of spiritual 
history may lead to the habitual use of it as an 
ordinary part of the devotional life. 

There are incidental differences between Tractarians 
and Anglo-Catholics which are in circumstances only. 
From the necessities of the case, the earlier practice 
had about it much privacy or even secrecy. Confes- 
sions were heard in churches when no one was likely 
to be in them and sometimes with locked doors, in 
vestries, in private houses. All this, however neces- 
sary for the time, certainly was unhealthy. The 
necessities for it have now passed. Indeed the large 
number of confessions now heard in many churches 
would render the continuance of it impossible. The 
administration of Penance has become as open as 
such a regular ordinance of the Church ought to be. 

A more serious difference may be in the opinions 
held as to the obligation of sacramental confession. 
This obligation was regarded by the Tractarians as 
chiefly moral. As the real meaning and horror of sin 
were realized, and in particular as there was fuller 
understanding of it as an offence against the love of 
God, the soul that was truly penitent would desire to 
use all possible ways of humiliation, all possible means 
of deepening sorrow, every possible method of bringing 
the acknowledgment of sin to the cross of Christ. It 
was desirable that Church teaching should include full 
instruction on the subject ; the parish priest must tell 
his candidates for Confirmation and others of the 
provision which the Church had made; it was simple 
honesty that he should speak to his people during © 
their life time of the ordinance about which he was 
commanded by the Prayer Book to tell them when 


CONFESSION 61 


seriously ill; it was but reverence for Almighty God 
that there should be in life what was to be done before 
death. But the using of Confession was regarded as 
permissive rather than as obligatory, as the act to 
which the soul was driven by the depth and sincerity 
of its penitence rather than as a compliance with any 
regulation of the Church. No thoughtful Anglo- 
Catholic would wish to lessen the moral aspect of 
Confession. But a question arises that is theological 
and historical. If the initial forgiveness of the Chris- 
tian soul is bestowed by God in the sacrament of Bap- 
tism, and if mortal sin—that is, grave sin committed 
with knowledge and deliberation by an act of the will— 
separates from God and stops the beneficial influence 
of the baptismal grace, may it not be that a sacra- 
mental restoration of the state which was sacramentally 
conferred may be needed? And historically, is it not 
the case that for the gravest offences the Penance of 
the ancient Church—of which the sacrament of Penance 
is the descendant—was required? And, if so, may 
there not be an obligation binding instructed Catholics 
to seek sacramental Absolution by means of Confes- 
sion when a mortal sin has been committed ? And, if 
sacramental confession of all mortal sins be needed, 
and if it is often difficult for a sensitive soul to be sure 
whether a sin has been mortal or not, will not a practice 
of habitual Confession from early years be wise ? This 
theological and historical consideration, more felt 
to-day than it was by the earlier Tractarians, probably 
leads many Anglo-Catholics to view the obligation of 
Confession in a somewhat different light, and to believe 
that this different light is required by the very princi- 
ples which the Tractarians revived. And, so far as 
this is the case, they may teach about Confession 


62 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


with an added emphasis on the need of it. 

Many Confessions made to-day are those of steady 
faithful souls who are going quietly on in paths of 
holiness, some of whom, perhaps, have not committed 
a mortal sin in the whole course of their lives. The 
extent of this practice is far greater now than in the 
time of the Tractarians. But the difference is one of 
extent only. The Tractarians allowed and encouraged 
the making of such Confessions. There is no doubt 
that such a use of sacramental confession is an expan- 
sion of the original Penance of the Church. It is one 
of the effects of the union in the Church of the con- 
fession made for the purpose of receiving reconcilia- 
tion after grave sin, and the seeking of spiritual counsel 
and help in another way. But that is not an objection 
to it. An expansion of the original use of the sacra- 
ments is one of the ways in which the authority of the 
Church is operative. The fact that in the earliest days 
all who were present at any celebration of the Eucharist, 
apart from some special reason, received the Com- 
munion at that time is not a reason against the law- 
fulness of attendance at Mass without Communion. 
The fact that the purpose of reserving the consecrated 
sacrament in the first instance was, and still is, 
that it may be received in Communion does not make 
services of Adoration unlawful. Similarly, the fact 
that the sacrament of Penance was instituted for the 
forgiveness of grave sin does not require that this 
wider use should be forbidden. 

The practice of Confession has been misunderstood 
and attacked probably more than any other part of 
the Catholic system. Whether administered in the 
Church of Rome or in the Church of England, it is 
still regarded with deep distrust by very many English 


CONFESSION 63 


people. No one need deny that there have been abuses 
connected with it. Some may have used it formally 
or mechanically or without serious purpose of amend- 
ment. Some may have allowed it to be a sop to con- 
science or a comfort which their spiritual state did not 
really warrant. But those who know most about it 
concur in saying that by means of it there have been 
conquests of sin which might otherwise have been 
impossible, a degree of progress in holiness which else 
could hardly have been, and that even those who 
have profited least by it would have done less well 
without it. There are many priests with a large 
experience in hearing Confessions who can echo the 
words which Dr. Pusey wrote seventy-five years ago: 
“Tf there is one part of our ministry which God has 
blessed ; if there be one part of our office, as to the 
fruits of which we look with hopefulness and joy to 
the day of judgement, it is to the visible cleansing of 
souls, the deepened penitence, ‘the repentance unto 
salvation not to be repented of,’ the hope in Christ, 
the freshness of grace, the joy of forgiven souls, the 
evident growth in holiness, the angel-joy ‘ over each 
sinner that repenteth,’ which this ministry has dis- 
closed to us.’”* The present writer well remembers 
discussing the subject of Confession with an experienced 
priest some forty years ago, and the priest saying: 
“T cannot think of anyone who would not be better 
for it.’” Such estimates on the part of those who have 
knowledge afford the evidential justification of the 
system of Penance established in the Church. 


1H. B. Pusey, The Church of England leaves hey children free to 
whom to open their griefs (1850), p. 3. 


CHAPTER X 
UNCTION OF THE SICK 


HE New Testament suggests. different ways of 
dealing with disease. On ordinary occasions 
our Lord used ordinary natural means in His 

incarnate life, and sustained His human nature by 
food and sleep. He thus sanctioned and hallowed all 
natural means, the results of scientific inquiry, the 
experience of physicians, the skill of surgeons, that 
influence of mind on body which is a natural faculty. 
Our Lord taught also the power of prayer and the 
power of miracle, and spoke of these as to be exercised 
by His disciples. And in allowing His apostles 
to anoint the sick during His ministry He foreshadowed 
a sacramental use of oil. Prayer and miracle are 
ways of dealing with disease mentioned in the Acts 
of the Apostles and in the Epistles ; and in one Epistle 
there is a further advance towards a sacrament of 
Unction: “Is any among you sick? Let him call 
for the presbyters of the Church; and let them pray 
over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the 
Lord: and the prayer of faith shall save him that 
is sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and, if he 
have committed sins, it shall be forgiven him.’ 

The four ways of dealing with disease suggested by 
the New Testament—natural means, prayer, miracle, 


1St. James v, 14, 15. 


UNCTION OF THE SICK 65 


sacrament—are all found in the records of the ancient 
Church. It is unnecessary here to dwell on the first 
three apart from saying that such instances as that 
of cures by the use of oil from the church lamp* are 
to be associated rather with miracle than with sacra- 
ment. More attention must be paid to the sacramental 
use of oil. 

The evidence from the early Church for the Unction 
which became the Office of the Holy Oil in the East 
and the Last Anointing in the West is scanty and 
fragmentary, but there is sufficient to show that it 
was a rite of the Church. It is so referred to in the 
sequence of Church Orders, which show the existence 
of such a rite from the end of the second century to 
the end of the fourth century ;? and there are allusions 
to it in other literature from the fifth century onwards.° 

In the earliest references to the Unction of the Sick 
it is difficult to distinguish sharply between the healing 
of the body and the healing of the soul. If the passage 
in the Epistle of St. James stood by itself, the present 
writer would be disposed to interpret it as referring 
to spiritual healing only, that is, only to the healing 
of the soul from sin. The whole context of the passage 
relates to what is spiritual ;* dealing with sin is closely 
associated with the particular command for anointing ;° 
the words “‘ that ye may be healed ”’ in the following 

1St. Chrysostom speaks of this as if it was not infrequent: see 
his in Matt. hom. xxxii, 6. 

4 See the earliest form of the Roman Church Order in E. Hauler, 
Fragmenta Veronensia Latina (1900), pp. I10, 111; and the later 
forms in G. Horner, The Statutes of the Apostles (1904), p. 141; 
Canons of Hippolytus, § 28; Testament of the Lord, i, 24, 25; Sera- 
pion, §§ 5, 17; Apostolic Constitutions, viii, 29. 

$ Pope Innocent I, ep. xxv, 8 (March 19, 416); Ceesarius of 
Arles (died 542), serm. cclxy. 3, cclxxix, 4, 5. 


*See chapter v throughout. 
5 verse 15: ‘‘if he have committed sins, it shall be forgiven him.” 


66 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


verse obviously denote healing from sin ;+ the words 
“the Lord shall raise him up” might refer equally 
easily to healing of body or healing of soul ;? the usage 
of the New Testament elsewhere would support inter- 
preting the words “ the prayer of faith shall save him 
that is sick’’ rather of the soul than of the body.® 
The most obvious interpretation of the passage, then, 
would be to understand it only of the healing of the 
soul. In view, however, of the constant association 
of bodily healing with Unction in the prayers for 
blessing oil in the early forms of the Church Order 
and in the writings of the fathers, it is perhaps more 
likely that both healing of body and healing of soul 
are referred to in the Epistle than that the allusion 
is to healing of soul only. If such is the right inter- 
pretation, this will be in harmony with the close con- 
nexion of body and soul which is constantly assumed 
in the New Testament. 

Healing of body is prominent in the earliest writings 
outside the New Testament which allude to Unction, 
and such healing may have been the primary purpose 
in the administration. But references to a gift of 
spiritual grace are not absent; sanctification of soul 
and forgiveness of sins are mentioned ;* and it is 


Pyerse 2b. 

2In the New Testament éye/pw usually refers to the body, but 
it has a spiritual significance in Rom. xiii, 11; Eph. v, 14. 

3In a very large majority of passages in the New Testament 
owlw refers to the soul. 

4 See the references on page 65, notes 2 and 3 above. Iam unable 
to accept the learned and ingenious suggestions for the alteration 
of the text of Serapion and the later form of the Roman Church 
Order made by my friend Father F. W. Puller in his The Anointing 
of the Sick in Scripture and Tradition (1904), pp. 95-110. The 
phrase ‘‘ forgiveness of sins’”’ in the text above is from Cesarius of 
Arles, serm. cclxv, 3, “‘ corporis sanitatem accipere et peccatorum 
indulgentiam ... obtinere;’’ cclxxix, 5, ‘“‘ non solum sanitatem 
corporum sed etiam remissionem acciperent peccatorum.”’ 


UNCTION OF THE SICK 67 


impossible wholly to distinguish the operations of God 
in response to the prayers of the Church for the body 
from those for the soul. 

Little is known about the administration of this 
Unction in the Eastern Church during the middle 
ages. The probability is that the practice was much 
the same as in the ancient Church with a growing ten- 
dency to restrict it to the dying, and to lay greater 
stress on the effects in the soul than on those in the 
body. At the present time more is said about the soul 
than about the body throughout the office of adminis- 
tration, and both are mentioned side by side in the 
actual prayer of anointing; healing of both spiritual 
and bodily infirmities is mentioned in official docu- 
ments and in the writings of theologians ; the Unction 
is usually, though not exclusively, administered to 
persons seriously or dangerously ill; and in some 
places the consecrated oil is used on Maundy Thursday 
as a preparation for the reception of the Holy Com- 
munion by those who are well. 

In the West it is probable that the tendency during 
the middle ages was to restrict the administration to 
the dying, and to emphasize the spiritual rather than 
the bodily effects. By the twelfth century it had 
become chiefly a sacrament for the dying, and a little 
later the title ‘‘extrema unctio,”’ which originally 
meant the last of the anointings in distinction from the 
anointings in other sacraments, had come to mean 
also the anointing of those at the point of death. 
Among the causes which led to the administration 
being restricted to the dying may have been the 
superstition that it might not be received a second 
time, and that one who had been so anointed might 
not afterwards eat flesh or walk with bare feet or 


68 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


use matriage, charges made by priests for the adminis- 
tration of the sacrament, and the teaching of some 
theologians that this Unction so completely frees the 
soul from evil and confers on it God’s gifts that it 
prepares the soul for the immediate entrance into glory. 
But, while the chief emphasis was on the spiritual 
effects, the healing of the body was not wholly ignored. 
In the modern Roman Catholic Church the sacrament 
is administered to persons dangerously ill, usually 
when they are near death, though books of instruction 
for priests say that they should try to secure adminis- 
tration earlier than just at the last. The effects are 
said to be the strengthening of the soul against the 
pains of death, the preparing of the soul for entrance 
into glory, forgiveness of sin and removal of the effects 
of sin, and, if such be the will of God, the restoration 
of, or improvement in, bodily health. 

Anointing was retained as part of the Order for 
the Visitation of the Sick in the English Prayer Book 
of 1549, with the instruction: ‘‘If the sick person 
desire to be anointed, then shall the priest anoint him 
upon the forehead or breast only’”’; and the objects 
prayed for were both bodily and spiritual health. The 
provision for anointing was omitted in the 1552 and 
subsequent English Prayer Books. Anointing was 
restored by the section of the Non-jurors known as 
the Usagers. 

No vigorous attempt to recover the Unction of the 
Sick was made by the Tractarians. Writing in 1867 
Bishop Alexander Forbes described it as “ the lost 
pleiad of the Anglican firmament.’ A desire for the 
general restoration of it was implied by the same 
writer, and he expressed his conviction that there was 
“nothing to hinder the apostolic and scriptural custom 


UNCTION OF THE SICK 69 


of anointing the sick, whensoever any devout person 
may desire it.’ 

The number of instances in which the Unction of 
the Sick has been administered in the Church of Eng- 
land during the last fifty years probably is large, 
though the private nature of the administration makes 
any accurate estimate impossible. Anglo-Catholics 
in general desire its more complete restoration. 

In this desire for the more complete restoration of 
the Unction of the Sick there are different motives. 
The opinion of many is that the ordinary practice of 
the Roman Catholic Church embodies the experience 
gained in the Church’s life, and is the best method 
for the use of the sacrament. Others hold that the 
right idea of the Unction has long been perverted or 
obscured, and that the purpose of the administration 
should be, at any rate primarily, the restoration or 
amelioration of bodily health. Others, again, believe 
that the two objects cannot be divided, and that 
neither an administration in which the recovery of 
bodily health is the primary object nor a use as a sacra- 
ment of the dying is to be condemned. 

Methods of spiritual healing of bodily disease, in 
which sometimes anointing with oil and sometimes 
the laying on of hands is used, have of late been advo- 
cated and adopted by many whose theological and 
ecclesiastical position is very far distant from that 
of Anglo-Catholics. The popularity of these methods 
—and in some cases their apparent efficacy—may 
serve to illustrate that, whatever abuses there may 
have been in the early sixteenth century, the abandon- 
ment of the Unction of the Sick by the official English 


1 Bishop A. P. Forbes, An Explanation of the Thirty-nine Articles 
(third edition, 1878), pp. 465, 474. 


70 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


Church was the result of a failure to appreciate real . 
needs. Moreover, “‘ the Church of England,” to quote 
Bishop Forbes again, “‘ acted more in conformity to 
its declared adherence to antiquity by appointing, in 
the first instance, a service for the anointing of the sick 
in her first English Prayer Book’ than by the later 
omission of any such provision. 

1 Bishop A. P. Forbes, op. cit., p. 474. 


CHAPTER XI 
HOLY ORDERS 


© see need of the English Church in regard to the 
ministry, when the Tractarian Movement began, 
was not the restoration of something which 
had been lost but the due appreciation of what had 
been retained. For the Church of England had 
securely kept the three Orders of Bishops, Priests, 
and Deacons by a continuous succession, which the 
tumults and changes of the sixteenth century and the 
disasters of the seventeenth had not been able to 
break. But by the beginning of the nineteenth century 
there were few who had retained a Catholic belief as 
to what these three Orders meant. The impoverished 
ideas about the Holy Eucharist, the practical disuse 
of Confession, the forgetfulness of the sacramental 
principle in general, had combined to obscure a true 
conception of the ministry. So, when the first of the 
Tracts for the Times, dated September 9, 1833, ap- 
peared, there were phrases used which had a strange, 
and even a startling, sound. The description in the 
dedication of “the presbyters and deacons of the 
Church of Christ in England, ordained thereunto by 
the Holy Ghost and the imposition of hands,” though 
it said no more than the Prayer Book itself, struck 
an unfamiliar note in the emphasis on Ordination 
being “‘ by the Holy Ghost.”’ In the Tract itself, the 


972 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


Church was described as “our Holy Mother,” the 
bishops were ‘‘ the successors of the apostles,’ “ the 
real ground on which our authority is built ’’ was “ our 
apostolical descent,” “‘ the doctrine of the apostolical 
succession ’’ expressed “‘ a plain historical fact,’ there 
was an exhortation: ‘‘ Exalt our Holy Fathers the 
bishops, as the representatives of the Apostles, and the 
Angels of the Churches; and magnify your office, as 
being ordained by them to take part in their Ministry.”’ 
Such language showed the conception of the Ministry 
which was to mark the Tractarian Movement; and, 
when the first forty-six Tracts were collected into a 
volume about a year later, ‘“‘ the apostolic succession ”’ 
and “‘ the Holy Catholic Church’ were mentioned in 
the prefixed “ advertisement ’’ as the “ principles of 
action ’’ which the writers of the Tracts desired to 
emphasize. 

The doctrine of the apostolic succession was central 
in the Tractarian teaching about the Ministry. The 
bishops are the successors of the apostles because one 
bishop has succeeded another in occupying their sees, — 
because a continuous commission has been received 
by one bishop after another, because the bishops per- 
form the functions which in the earliest Christian 
Church were performed by the apostles, and because 
the grace of the episcopate has been permanently pre- 
served by the transmission of the divine gifts through 
episcopal consecration from the time of the apostles 
to the present day.? In the ancient Church a bishop 


1It has been maintained, notably by the Bishop of Gloucester 
(Dr. A. C. Headlam), that the true idea of apostolic succession, 
which was held in the early Church, did not include this fourth point. . 
See the Bishop’s article entitled “‘ Apostolic Succession’”’ in The 
Prayer Book Dictionary (second edition, 1925), pp. 34-39, his Bamp- 
ton Lectures on The Doctrine of the Church and Christian Reunion 
(1920), pp. 128, 172, 265, and his Charge entitled The Church of 


HOLY ORDERS 73 


was regarded as succeeding the apostles partly because 
he inherited the see which he occupied, and. partly 
because he was consecrated to his office by another 
bishop. There was succession by office, and there was 
succession by consecration. It followed from the 
doctrine, as taught by the Tractarians, that a valid 
consecration of a bishop or a valid ordination of a 
priest depended on the consecrator or ordainer having 
received the grace of episcopacy through a succession 
from the apostles. They rightly understood the tra- 
ditional teaching in the Church to require that a bishop 
must succeed to the apostles not only by holding an 
episcopal office but also by having received episcopal 
consecration. 

Bishops and priests, then, in the eyes of the Trac- 
tarians, were not only holders of certain positions in 
the Church. They were also possessors of very awful 
spiritual powers, for the possession of which there was 
no guarantee outside the Catholic Church, by which 
a bishop could consecrate the holy mysteries, absolve, 
confirm, ordain, and by which a priest could absolve 
and consecrate. 

In the Tractarian theology the bishop and the priest 
were regarded as acting in the name of Christ and as 
His representatives. To this was added by many who 
accepted the Tractarian teaching a further conception 
that the bishop or the priest acts on behalf of the 
Church and as the representative of the Church. The 
great action of the Holy Eucharist, for instance, is 
the work of the Church asa whole. The plural number 
England (1924), pp. 121-124. For ancient evidence about the 
succession see the paper Who are members of the Church ? (1921) by 


Father F. W. Puller and the present writer, Appendix III, pp. 
64-72; and Father F. W. Puller, Essays and Letters on Orders and 


Jurisdiction (1925), pp. 1-57. 
F 


“4 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


used in the traditional rites of the Church in such 
phrases as ‘“‘ We offer to Thy glorious Majesty ” is an 
illustration of this aspect of the act. A priest cannot 
be ordained without a bishop, and the Holy Eucharist 
cannot be consecrated without a priest, any more 
than a man can see without an eye, but the ordination 
and the consecration are the acts of the whole Church, 
as sight is the act of the whole man. These two 
aspects—that of the bishop and priest acting in the 
name of Christ, and that of their acting in the name 
of the Church—are not contradictory but supplemen- 
tary. Inheriting the Tractarian teaching, many Anglo- 
Catholics have combined with it this further aspect. 
The chief stress is laid by some of them on the action 
being in the name of Christ, by others on the action 
being in the name of the Church. To some the first 
idea makes the strongest appeal, to others the second 
is more attractive. Each has its own points of contact 
with Catholic theology. Great divines have empha- 
sized the one or the other.t Anglo-Catholics may well 
be content to hold them in combination. 
Since the time of the Tractarians there has been 
much progress in the study of early Church History. 
Few scholars would now deny that there are obscure 
and difficult problems in the first and second centuries. 
But, the more complete the study, the more it has 
made clear that all which is essential to the Tractarian 
theology about the ministry is well established.” 


1 For instance, St. Thomas Aquinas insists that the words of 
consecration in the Mass are said by the priest in the person of 
Christ, though he says also that the priest when offering the prayers 
of the Mass speaks in the person of the Church (see ¢.g., summa 
theologica, III, XXVIII, 1, LXXX, 12 ad 3, LXXXI, I, 3, 4;°97 ad 3, 
LXXXIII, I ad 3); and it is an important part of the theology of. 
Duns Scotus that the priest offers the sacrifice in the person of the 
whole Church (see ¢.g., guestiones quodlibetales, XxX). 

2 See the volume entitled Essays on the early history of the Church 


HOLY ORDERS 75 


It is necessary to guard against two misconceptions. 
First, the assertion that divine gifts are transmitted 
by means of episcopal consecration and ordination does 
not imply any physical or material process. It does 
not imply that the consecrating or ordaining bishop 
is the source of grace. There is no idea of a physical 
or material thing which the bishop takes from himself 
and gives to another; and the source of grace is God. 
Secondly, the denial that there can be a valid ministry 
without an episcopal succession, or a valid Eucharist 
without an episcopally ordained priest, does not in- 
volve a denial that there are gifts of God to those 
who are without such a ministry and such sacraments. 
It may well be that God bestows gifts on those outside 
the Church who in good faith try to serve Him, or aim 
at what they see to be best. Much spiritual benefit 
may be received by the Wesleyan using what he believes 
to be true sacraments, or the member of the Society 
of Friends who rejects any sacrament, or the heathen 
to whom even the name of Christ is unknown. All 
these in their several ways may reach different degrees 
of righteous life and communion with God. One of 
the strictest of orthodox theologians used the phrase 
that the power of God “ is not tied to the visible sacra- 
ments.” The existence of a visible Church, within 
which there is covenanted grace and the guarantee of 
valid sacraments, does not necessitate the denial that 
sanctifying gifts may be bestowed on those outside 
it by the Author of all good. 


and the Ministry (1918, second edition, 1921), edited by H. B. 
Swete and C. H. Turner. 
1St. Thomas Aquinas, summa theologica, III, LXVUul, 2. 


CHAPTER XII 
HOLY MATRIMONY 


T the beginning of the Tractarian Movement 
questions about marriage were far less pro- 
minent than they have since become. There 

was no doubt among Church people in general that 
divorce was not recognized in the Church of England. 
It was acknowledged that the Form of Solemnization 
of Matrimony did not contemplate the possibility of 
either husband or wife marrying again in the lifetime 
of the other. The prohibition in the canons of 1603, 
preventing one who had been separated from contract- 
ing matrimony while the other remained alive, was 
regarded as in accordance with the law of Christ. The 
Table of Prohibited Degrees printed at the end of the 
Prayer Book and sanctioned by canon 99 of 1603 was 
viewed as a summary of the teaching of Holy Scripture 
and as binding on Church people. The Divorce Act 
of 1857 and the Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Marriage Act 
of 1907 were still far off. The distinction by which 
before 1835 marriages contracted in disobedience to 
the Table of Prohibited Degrees, though voidable, 
were not necessarily void by the law of the State, 
and the allowance by the State of a divorce for which 
an Act of Parliament was obtained, were not suffi- 
ciently utilized to make practical difficulty frequent. 

The general teaching of the early Tractarians did 


HOLY MATRIMONY 77 


something to emphasize the high regard in which 
matriage was held, and the spiritual importance of 
the marriage rite. A poem in The Christian Year, 
published in 1827, six years before the beginning of 
the Oxford Movement, laid stress on the personal 
action of our Lord in the administration of Matrimony : 


“’Tis He who clasps the marriage band, 
And fits the spousal ring, 
Then leaves ye kneeling, hand in hand, 
Out of His stores to bring 
His Father’s dearest blessing.” 
But any distinct recognition of the sacramental 
character of Holy Matrimony came slowly. 

When attempts were made to legalize by the sanction 
of the State marriage with a deceased wife’s sister, 
these attempts were resisted by the Tractarians.* As 
the question of divorce became more prominent, there 
was some difference of opinion among them. Mr. 
Keble maintained the absolute indissolubility of valid 
Christian marriage ;? arguments used by Dr. Pusey 
tended towards the opinion that, while apart from one 
exception marriage is indissoluble, yet one exception 
exists, and that a husband may put away an adulterous 
wife and marry again.® 

On these particular subjects Anglo-Catholics are not 
all agreed. All of them would unhesitatingly say 
that the Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Marriage Act of 1907 


1See ¢.g., E. B. Pusey, Marriage with a Deceased Wife’s Stster 
prohibited by Holy Scripture as understood by the Church for 1500 
years (1849). 

2 See his Am argument for not proceeding immediately to repeal the 
laws which treat the nuptial bond as indissoluble (1857), and Sequel 
of the argument against immediately repealing the laws which treat 
the nuptial bond as indissoluble (1857). 

2 See his note to the translation of Tertullian in the Library of 
the Fathers (second edition, 1854), pp. 443-449. 


78 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


has made no difference in the law of the Church, and 
that the prohibition which the Act removed still 
exists for Church people. They would unanimously 
repudiate a theory that the law of the Church can be 
altered by any action of the State. But, apart from 
this general agreement, there are differences of opinion. 
It is held by some that the prohibition of this particular 
matriage is so necessitated by the teaching of Holy 
Scripture and the law of the Church, and so bound up 
with the principle of affinity, that there can be no 
exceptions to it; and that the dispensations for it, 
which are given in certain cases by the Roman Catholic 
Church, in history resulted from a weak yielding to 
the pressure of great men, and are now due not to any 
sound principle but to moral compromise. On the 
other hand, there are those who hold that there is no 
absolute bar in principle to such marriages, and that 
for sufficient reasons they may well be allowed by 
special permission, as by the Roman Catholic dis- 
pensations.* 

There is probably less difference of opinion among 
Anglo-Catholics in regard to the indissolubility of 
marriage. With very rare exceptions they hold that 
any valid and consummated marriage is absolutely 
indissoluble, and that the re-marriage of either husband 
or wife while the other lives is both unlawful and 
invalid. They therefore refuse to publish banns for, 
or officiate at, or lend their churches for, such cere- 
monies. Any other course would be intolerable to 
them, since they believe that the probibition of re- 
marriage after divorce in the Church of England is 


1 The present writer’s agreement with the former of these opinions 
may be seen in his The Law of Christian Marriage especially in 
relation to the Deceased Wife’s Sistev’s Marriage Act (1907). ° 


HOLY MATRIMONY 79 


based on a right interpretation of Holy Scripture and 
of the tradition of the Church. 

The essence of marriage is in the contract of man and 
woman. In making this contract those who are being 
married ought, if they are Christians, to receive the 
blessing of the Church. They receive this blessing as 
they make their contract in church in the presence of 
a priest, and receive through him the divine ratification. 
A valid marriage of baptized persons places them in a 
sacramental relation, even if they do not receive the 
Church’s blessing, and is indissoluble.? 

It has already been said (page 28) that the number 
of the sacraments is largely a matter of terminology. 
It would be easy to formulate reasons for a number 
greater than seven or less. But tradition in the 
Church since the twelfth century, and the practice of 
the Eastern and Roman Catholic Churches at the 
present time, concur with obvious convenience and 
reasonableness in supporting a terminology which 
makes the number to be seven, and includes Holy 
Matrimony in the list. In His ministry our Lord 
showed His sanction for the institution of marriage, 
which already existed, and reaffirmed the sacred 
character of the marriage bond; as far back as evi- 
dence goes, Christian marriage has received the blessing 
of the Church; in it there are the inward grace which 
God gives and the outward part in the contract between 
man and wife. If,in an age of many dangers to married 


1 The writer believes that Anglo-Catholics in general agree with 
the main position taken up in his Divorce and Re-marriage (1913). 

2 This is the ordinary Western teaching, which the writer under- 
stands is accepted by Anglo-Catholics in general. The teaching 
of the Eastern Church makes the minister to be a bishop or priest. 
As a matter of discipline, the Roman Catholic Church, by a decree 
of the Council of Trent and a regulation of Pope Pius X, has re- 
quired the presence of a priest and two witnesses at all marriages 
of Roman Catholics. 


80 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


and family life, Anglo-Catholics do something to main- 
tain the solemnity and sanctity of marriage itself, to 
preserve a due sense of its privileges and responsibili- 
ties, to help the married to fulfil their obligations to 
one another and to their families in the true Christian 
spirit, they will deserve well of society in general no 
less than of the Church. 

The writer has quoted before in another book a 
passage as powerful as it is eloquent by a great Christian 
layman, who was an adherent of the Tractarians. It 
is not inappropriate to quote it here again: “‘ Beyond 
all things else marriage derives its essential and specific 
character from restraint: restraint from the choice of 
more than a single wife; restraint from choosing her 
among near relatives by blood or affinity ; restraint 
from the carnal use of woman in any relation inferior 
to marriage; restraint from forming any temporary 
or any other than a lifelong contract. By the pro- 
hibition of polygamy it concentrates the affections 
which its first tendency is to diffuse; by the prohibi- 
tion of incest it secures the union of families as well 
as individuals, and keeps the scenes of dawning life 
and early intimacy free from the smallest taint of 
appetite ; by the prohibition of concubinage it guards 
the dignity of woman and chastens whatever might be 
dangerous as a temptation in marriage through the 
weight of domestic cares and responsibilities ; by the 
prohibition of divorce, above all, it makes the conjugal 
union not a mere indulgence of taste and provision for 
enjoyment, but a powerful instrument of discipline and 
self-subjugation, worthy to take rank in that subtle 
and wonderful system of appointed means by which the © 
life of man on earth becomes his school for heaven.””* 


1W. E. Gladstone in Quarterly Review, July, 1857, pp. 285, 286, 
reprinted in Gleanings of Past Years, vi, 101, 102 


CHAPTER XIII 


OUR LADY AND THE SAINTS 


regard to our Lady and the saints, it is worth while 
to compare The Christian Year, published in 1827, 
with the Lyra Innocentium, published in 1846. Among 
the matters in which Mr. Keble had reached greater 
definiteness in the Lyra Innocentium Dr. Lock in his 
biography has included the relation to the saints. It 
would be far from true to say that devotion to our 
Lady and the saints is absent from The Christian Year. 
Such an assertion would be refuted at once by the 
poems in which the lines occur : 
“So on the King of Martyrs wait 
Three chosen bands, in royal state, 
And all earth owns, of good and great, 
Is gathered in that choir.’”4 


“His throne, thy bosom blest, 
O Mother undefiled— 
That throne, if aught beneath the skies, 
Beseems the sinless child.’ 


“‘« Ave Maria! Mother blest, 
To whom, caressing and caressed, 
Clings the Eternal Child ; 
Favoured beyond Archangels’ dream, 
When first on thee with tenderest gleam 
Thy new-born Saviour smiled.’’® 


1¥For St. Stephen’s Day. 
2For the Purification. 
3 For the Annunciation. 


|: considering the thought of the Tractarians in 


82 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


But in 1846 the language is more explicit and the 
influence of the thought is greater than in 1827. As 
Dr. Lock points out, “‘ The saints have grown dearer 
to him, and he loves to trace in the baptized not only 
the signs of filial likeness to the Father which is in 
heaven, but of likeness to its brothers the saints, 
whether they recall the penitence of St. Peter, the 
loving smile of the loved disciple, or the purity of 
Blessed Mary. Especially is reverence towards the 
Blessed Virgin marked—her 


‘Whom the awful blessing 
Lifted above all Adam’s race.’ 


The orphaned child is taught to feel that not only her 
own mother is praying for her, but also ‘A holier 
mother rapt in more prevailing prayer.’’’* Most 
significant of all is the poem entitled Mother out of 
Sight which had been written in 1844, and which 
Mr. Keble intended to prefix to the Lyra Innocentium 
in 1846 until dissuaded from doing so by some of his 
more nervous friends. At the beginning of the poem 
a boy is mentioned as going into a room, looking 
round it quickly, and going out in disappointment 
because ‘‘ My mother is not here.’’ This image repre- 
sents the first thought in the poem that in the Church 
of England the holy Mother of our Lord is not found. 
But Mr. Keble speedily corrects it. The daily recital 
of the Magnificat is a continual commemoration. The 
observance of her five festivals marks her honour. 
For those who have eyes to see she is still here. 


“Fails He to bless or home or choral throng 
Where true hearts breathe His Mother’s evensong ? 


1'W. Lock, John Keble (third edition, 1893), p. 136. 


OUR LADY AND THE SAINTS 83 


Mother of God! O, not in vain 
We learned of old thy lowly strain. 
Fain in thy shadow would we rest, 
And kneel with thee, and call thee blest ; 
With thee would ‘ magnify the Lord,’ 
And, if thou art not here adored, 
Yet seek we, day by day, the love and fear 
Which bring thee, with all saints, near and more 
near. 


Thenceforth, whom thousand worlds adore, 
He calls thee Mother evermore ; 
Angel nor Saint His face may see 
Apart from what He took of thee. 
How may we choose but name thy name 
Echoing below their high acclaim 
In holy Creeds ? Since earthly song and prayer 
Must keep faint time to the dread anthem there. 


How but in love on thine own days, 
Thou blissful one, upon thee gaze? ”’ 


And, moreover, those in the Church of England who 
are using what the Church of England thus provides 
may supplement it by further devotion. 


“Nay every day, each suppliant hour, 
Whene’er we kneel in aisle or bower, 
Thy glories we may greet unblamed, 
Nor shun the lay by seraphs framed, 
“Hail, Mary, full of grace!’ O, welcome sweet, 
Which daily in all lands all saints repeat ! 


Therefore as kneeling day by day 
We to our Father duteous pray, 
So unforbidden may we speak 
An Ave to Christ’s Mother meek : 


84 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


(As children with ‘ good morrow’ come 
To elders in some happy home :) 
Inviting so the saintly host above 
With our unworthiness to pray in love.” ? 


In regard to this matter, Mr. Keble may have 
been in advance of other Tractarians, especially in the 
suggestion that members of the Church of England 
may rightly join the Hail Mary to the Our Father 
in their prayers. But there were not wanting those 
who agreed with him. 

A notable instance of growth in regard to the invo- 
cation of saints is supplied by John Henry Newman. 
In 1833 Mr. Newman published in the British Magazine, 
and in 1836 republished in the Lyra Apostolica, some 
lovely verses entitled Rest, which contained a protest 
against invocation : 

“ They are at rest: 
We may not stir the heaven of their repose 
By rude invoking voice, or prayer addrest 
In waywardness to those 
Who in the mountain grots of Eden lie, 
And hear the fourfold river as it murmurs by.”’ ? 


In 1841, three years before Mr. Keble’s words: 


“So unforbidden may we speak 
An Ave to Christ’s Mother meek ” 


were written, Mr. Newman published the ninetieth of 
the Tracts for the Times. In an argument marked 
by characteristic restraint he did not express any 
opinion as to the advisability of invoking the saints; 
but he maintained that the condemnation of “ the 
Romish doctrine concerning”’ ‘‘ invocation of saints” 


1J. Keble, Miscellaneous Poems (1869), pp. 254-259. 
2 Tyra Apostolica (1836), LI. 


OUR LADY AND THE SAINTS 85 


in the twenty-second Article of Religion did not 
necessarily include rejection of the official Roman 
Catholic teaching on this subject. In the same year, 
1841, Dr. Pusey, though with evident reluctance and 
with many cautious qualifications, contended that the 
argument used by Mr. Newman in Tract XC was valid, 
and that there was “‘ no reason to think that our Article, 
in condemning ‘the Romish doctrine’ or ‘ the doctrine 
of the Schoolmen’ on this point, had any reference to 
anything found in the early Church”’ ;} and in later 
years he steadily maintained the position that, while 
prayer to God for the help of the prayers of the saints 
was preferable to direct address to the saints them- 
selves, the form of direct address to the saints, Ova 
pro nobis, was in accordance with the practice of the 
ancient Church and lawful in the Church of England.? 
And in 1867 Bishop Alexander Forbes, who, after Mr. 
Keble and Dr. Pusey, perhaps best represents the 
Tractarian theology, emphatically declared in regard 
to the invocation of saints: ‘‘ In principle, then, there 
is no question herein between us and any other por- 
tion of the Catholic Church.’’ 

The principles which the Tractarians accepted have 
been maintained by Anglo-Catholics. Probably there 
are few among them who question the lawfulness 
of invoking the saints, most of them practise invoca- 
tion as an habitual devotion, and they agree in assign- 
ing a prominent position in their thoughts and 

1 The Articles treated on in Tract 90 reconsidered and their inter- 
pretation vindicated in a letter to the Rev. R. W. Jelf, D.D. (1841), 
P the most important passages on this subject in Dr. Pusey’s 
writings are quoted with references and dates in the present writer’s 
The Invocation of Saints (third edition, 1916), pp. 59-64. 


3 Bishop A. P. Forbes, An Explanation of the Thirty-nine Articles 
(third edition, 1878), p. 422. 


86 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


prayers to the holy Mother of our Lord. The enthusi- 
asm with which the refrain ‘‘ Hail Mary, full of grace ’’** 
was sung by vast assemblies at the first Anglo-Catholic 
Congress in 1920 was to many the most impressive 
feature in the Congress. 

In maintaining these principles many Anglo-Catholics 
have carried the observance of them and the practical 
issues from them further than was possible for the 
Tractarians. In teaching, in private and public prayer, 
in hymns, veneration of our Lady and invocation of 
her and the other saints have become very prominent. 
About the doctrine which underlies the practices, and 
about the main features of the practices themselves, 
there probably is little disagreement among those who 
may be grouped together as Anglo-Catholics. But a 
good deal of difference as to methods and as to emphasis 
may be observed, and on some important matters 
there are differences of opinion. It may suffice to give 
three instances, one of practice and two of belief. 

Some Anglo-Catholics hold strongly that in expres- 
sion as well as in thought all invocations of our Lady ~ 
and of the saints should be restricted to the request 
for prayer. They would limit all such devotions to 
the words “ pray for us,” “‘ pray for me.’”’ They have 
no difficulty in the complete form of the Ave Mama, 
‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; 
blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the 
fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of 
God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our 
death ’’; but they think it well that invocation should 
not exceed the phraseology here used. Others wish 
to use stronger phrases, as, for instance, the words of - 


1 The refrain to the hymn beginning ‘‘ Ye who own the faith 
of Jesus”’ by V. S. S. Coles in The English Hymual, no. 218. 


OUR LADY AND THE SAINTS 87 


the well known hymn Ave maris stella in an unmodi- 
fied form : 


“Virgin all excelling, 
Gentle past our telling, 
Pardoned sinners render 
Gentle, chaste, and tender. 


In pure paths direct us, 

On our way protect us, 
Till, on Jesus gazing, 

We shall join thy praising.” 


In using such phraseology those who think it right 
understand it in the way explained by the Catechism 
of the Council of Trent and eminent Roman Catholic 
divines, namely, that, if Catholics should say to a saint, 
“Have mercy on me,” the meaning is ‘“‘ Have mercy 
by praying for me so that I may obtain gifts from 
God.’* Those who hold the different opinion think 
that, if such explanation of the phrases is needed, 
the phrases are better not used. 

An instance of doctrine is in regard to the concep- 
tion of the holy Mother of our Lord. There are some 
who are prepared to accept the doctrine defined for 
Roman Catholics by Pope Pius IX that the Blessed 
Virgin was not only without actual sin but was also 
preserved free from original sin in the first moment of 
her conception by the unique grace and privilege of 
God in view of the merits of our Lord, Others reject 
this doctrine as being without authority and as having 
been invented to satisfy a process of reasoning that is 
dangerous and untrustworthy. To the present writer 


1 Cat. conc. Trid. IV, vi, 3, 4: cf. e.g., Cardinal Bellarmine, de 
sanct. beat. i, 17. 


88 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


the grounds for a positive decision on such a matter 
seem to be lacking. He can understand the fascina- 
tion which the doctrine as a matter of arbitrary reason- 
ing has for some minds, and he follows the great thinker 
and historian Dean Church in his view that “ the 
dogma is itself an opinion which any one might hold, 
if he thinks that there are materials in the world from 
which to form an opinion about it’’; but he agrees 
also that the dogma rests on “‘ inferences from suppo- 
sitions about a matter of which we know nothing.”? 
Another instance in regard to belief concerns the 
Assumption. Signs are not wanting that a few Anglo- 
Catholics believe that, after the death of the Blessed 
Virgin, her body was assumed into heaven so that she, 
both in body and in soul, is now in glory at the throne 
of God. Such an opinion, though widely held both 
in the East and in the West, has never been made to 
be of faith in any part of the Church; and the vast 
majority of Anglo-Catholics probably either reject it 
or regard it as one of those matters for the decision of 
which there is no sufficient evidence. The practical 
question of keeping a feast day—the fifteenth of 
August—as the day of the Falling Asleep or the Repose 
of the holy Mother is altogether independent of any 
opinion as to the bodily, or even the spiritual, Assump- 
tion. All Anglo-Catholics—and a great many who 
are not Anglo-Catholics—may well agree that it is 
natural and right to commemorate the death of the 
Mother of our Lord, as of other saints; and that, 
in accordance with the ancient custom which became 
universal, the fifteenth of August is an appropriate 
day. 
Every Catholic wishes to declare the incommunicable 
1R. W. Church, Occasional Papers (1897), i, 354, 355- 


OUR LADY AND THE SAINTS 89 


greatness and glory of Almighty God. This is a 
foundation of Catholic belief, without which the whole 
edifice of Catholic theology would fall in ruins, and 
the whole system of Catholic devotion would come 
to nought. 

There are principles which have to be associated with 
this belief in the incommunicable greatness and glory 
of Almighty God. In God’s dealings with mankind, 
high privileges have been bestowed on human beings, 
and gifts are granted by means of others than those 
who receive them. One man may be of service to 
other men; and one man may rightly be honoured 
by other men. Human lives are dependent on one 
another; and reverence is rightly paid by one to 
another. We do well to honour those who are good 
and unselfish and generous. What thus applies in 
ordinary life applies in a higher degree to the saints ; 
for the saints are those who by the grace of God have 
been pre-eminent in goodness and unselfishness and 
generosity. And there is a further consideration in 
regard to the Mother of our Lord. She is not only 
the greatest of the saints, but also she has the unique 
position and privilege that she is the only being in 
the universe to whom the title Mother of God can be 
applied ; she alone by the decree of the Almighty was 
chosen to be the human mother of the eternal Son 
of God when He became Man. She possesses, in Bishop 
Pearson’s famous words, “that special privilege” 
‘““ which is incommunicable to any other.’”* 

And, when invoking the saints, the Catholic re- 
members the truth that the Church is the family of 
God. Inthe family of the Church, one member should 


1 Bishop John Pearson (died 1686), An Exposition of the Creed, 
p. 179 of the folio edition of 1669. 


G 


90 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


take interest in others, and have care for others, and 
pray for others. No sharp line can be drawn between 
the members of the family who are still on earth and 
those who have departed this earthly life. As we 
who are on earth do not cease to pray for those who 
are departed, so we cannot think that the departed 
have ceased to pray for those who are still on earth. 
The idea of all Christians, living and departed, as 
different members of the one family of God leads on 
to belief not only in the prayers of the living for the 
departed but also in the prayers of the departed for 
the living. And, if “‘ the supplication of a righteous 
man availeth much in its working,’* then the prayers 
of the saints, and of the saints departed, have their 
special value. Further, the unique position of the 
Mother of God, as it makes claims on the honour 
which we pay to her, has its effect also in the power 
of her prayers. 


2St. James, v, 16. 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE LAST THINGS 


soul after death than heaven and hell was 

frequent in the English Church from the six- 
teenth century onwards. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer 
in his reply to the Devon rebels in 1549 urged that 
“ The Scripture maketh mention of two places where 
the dead be received after this life, viz., of heaven and 
of hell.” The homily on prayer published in 1562 
contained the trenchant statement “neither let us 
dream any more that the souls of the dead are any- 
thing at all holpen by our prayers ; but, as the Scrip- 
ture teacheth us, let us think that the soul of man, 
passing out of the body, goeth straightways either 
to heaven or else to hell, whereof the one needeth no 
prayer and the other is without redemption.’’? In the 
seventeenth century a theologian so far removed in 
many respects from either Cranmer or the writer of 
the homily as Bishop Pearson, while describing the 
state of the blessed dead before their resurrection as 
“ partial life eternal,’’ spoke of them as being “ with 
Christ, who sitteth at the right hand of God.’® Such 


1J. Strype, Memorials of Thomas Cranmer, Appendix, p. 106 
(edition 1694). 

2A homily or sermon concerning prayer, pp. 299, 300 (edition 
Oxford, 1844). 

3 Bishop John Pearson, An Exposition of the Creed, p. 395 (edition 
1669). 


. DENIAL or ignoring of any other state of the 


92 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


teaching may have been due partly to a revolt from 
ideas about purgatory current in the middle ages, 
and partly to the survival of a belief that an ideal 
Christian life would be followed by the admission of 
the soul to heaven immediately after death. Be that 
as it may, any conception of a waiting state was widely 
ignored, and was sometimes denied, by English Church 
people. And indeed such a phrase as to go to heaven 
has been used as synonymous with to die not only 
frequently by members of the Church of England but 
also sometimes by Roman Catholics.t If the use of 
it by Roman Catholics has been consistent with a belief 
in a waiting state, it certainly tended in the Church of 
England to encourage the idea that there is no such 
state, and that prayers for the dead are useless and 
wrong. 

Neither a belief in a waiting state nor the use of 
prayer for the dead ever became wholly extinct in the 
Church of England.?. But, when the Oxford Movement 
began in 1833, there were few for whom either the 
belief or the practice had much meaning. In the 
revival the Tractarians went slowly. Dr. Pusey in 
his Letter to the Bishop of Oxford, written in 1839, 
pointed out that they had not wished to make prayers 
for the departed “‘ a topic in public discussion,” and 
that in No. LXIII of the Tvacts for the Times the 
subject had been mentioned only historically ‘‘ as one 
of the points in which all the ancient Liturgies agreed ”’ 

1The writer has heard it so used in conversation by Roman 
Catholic friends; and there are instances to be found in books: 
see ¢.g., expressions used by members of the Vaughan family in 
J. G. Snead-Cox, The Life of Cardinal Vaughan (1910), i, 29, 39, 40. - 

2 See e.g., instances covering a period from 1547 to 1820 in Hierur- 
gia Anglicana (new edition, 1904), iii, 143-166. See also J. W. 
Legg, English Church Life from the Restoration to the Tractarian 
Movement (1914), pp. 315-333. 


THE CAST, THINGS 93 


without any “‘ hint of regret at its exclusion ’’ from the 
Book of Common Prayer or the expression of “ any 
desire of its restoration.”* The knowledge that the 
ancient Church had habitually and without any sign 
of hesitation prayed for the departed appears to have 
been the first influence which promoted the recall of 
the practice. It was soon reinforced by the moral 
and spiritual arguments by which prayer for the dead 
no less than for the living was shown to be a religious 
duty. Bishop Alexander Forbes in 1867, while laying 
his chief stress on the practice of the Church, wrote 
“the true doctrine . . . is founded on the tenderest 
and deepest sympathies of our common human nature. 
Mankind will not endure the thought that at the 
moment of death all concern for those loved ones 
who are riven from us by death comes to anend. .. . 
Infinite love pursues the soul beyond the grave, and 
there has dealings with it, in which we who survive 
have still our co-operation. To pray for the departed 
is a deep instinct of natural piety.’ 

With the restoration of prayer for the departed 
came the clearer recognition of the waiting state. Here, 
too, there were moral and spiritual considerations 
which reinforced the argument from history. The 
conviction that there are many who at the moment of 
death are not ready for admission to heaven, while 
it would not be just to condemn them to hell, had its 
weight ; and it is not surprising that the need of pre- 
paration for heaven after death was felt not least by 
faithful servants of God. It has been recorded of 


1K. B. Pusey, A Letter to the . . . Bishop of Oxford on the tendency 
to Romanism imputed to doctrines held of old, as now, in the English 
Church (fourth edition, 1840), p. 186. 

2 A.\P. Forbes, An Explanation of the Thirty-nine Articles (third 
edition, 1878), p. 312. 


94 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


Mr. Keble that “the prospect of such a preparation 
was an unspeakable comfort to him.’” 

The recognition of the waiting state and the use of 
prayer for the dead inevitably brought up the subject 
of purgatory. The word purgatory had an evil sound. 
It was associated in men’s minds with horrible punish- 
ments, which seemed unworthy of God, with material 
fire, which seemed unsuitable for the chastisement of 
a disembodied soul, with mechanical ideas applied 
to the things of the spirit, and with the sale of Christian 
privileges. ‘‘ The Romish doctrine concerning pur- 
gatory ’’ was described in the twenty-second of the 
Articles of Religion as “‘ a fond thing vainly invented, 
and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but 
rather repugnant to the word of God.’”’ Consequently, 
the feeling against allowing a doctrine of purgatory 
was at first very strong. Yet, when the matter was 
seriously considered, it was seen that the word purga- 
tory might be applied to any state in which there 
was cleansing, and that the evil associations were — 
rather with particular ways in which a doctrine of 
purgatory had been expressed and with abuses than 
with any doctrine necessarily involved in the assertion 
of some kind of purgatory. In the ninetieth of the 
Tracts for the Times, published in 1841, Mr. Newman 
mentioned as illustrations three different doctrines 
“concerning purgatory,” no one of which was 
‘* Romish,”’ no one of which, therefore, was condemned 
by the Article, any one of which might be held in the 
English Church. A similar attitude was adopted by | 
Dr. Pusey, writing in the same year. He repudiated — 


1K. B. Pusey, What is of Faith as to everlasting punishment (1880), 
p. 118, note g. 
2. J. H. Newman, Tracts for the Times, no. XC (1841), p. 25. 


THE LAST THINGS 95 


the view of purgatory which he thought to be con- 
demned by the Article; he said that he did not hold 
“that there is a purgatory for the purification of the 
saints’’; and he maintained that “‘ our Article does 
not ... condemn all notion of a purifying process 
after this life, but one distinct system”; and, after 
his wont, he tried to give due solemnity and awe to 
the discussion by adding ‘If any collect from the 
impression of antiquity a general awe of what may 
pass between death and judgement, it may be that 
he will acquire more reverent thoughts of the exceed- 
ing holiness of God’s presence, and reflect more earnestly 
as to the fruit of actions or courses of action, and learn 
to speak less peremptorily, one way or the other, 
where Scripture is silent.’”* Further reflexion led 
Dr. Pusey to more positive affirmations. Four years 
later, in 1845, he wrote that he could not “‘ deny some 
purifying system in the intermediate state,’ and 
mentioned this as one of the “ things in antiquity ”’ 
which the course of study had enabled him to see.” 
His ultimate opinion was expressed in 1880, when he 
affirmed “‘ a preparation of souls, by which, ‘in entire 
freedom from the guilt of sin,’* with a will perfectly 
transformed into the will of God, and in continual union 
with Him, with a love perfected, pure, disinterested, 
diffused in their heart, assured of their salvation, com- 
forted by angels, refreshed and their waiting-time 
shortened through the prayers of survivors and the 
sacrifice of the altar, they may cast off their slough, 


1H. B. Pusey, The Articles treated on in Tract 90 reconsidered 
and their interpretation vindicated in a letter to the Rev. R. W. Jelf, 
(1841), pp. 87-90. 
__ ? See letter quoted in H. P. Liddon, Life of E. B. Pusey (1893), 
Ul, 457- . 

3A phrase quoted from St. Catherine of Genoa, Treatise on 
Purgatory, chap. 5. 


96 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


and amid whatever processes of purifying it may. 
please God to employ, and after whatever time, be 
admitted to the Beatific Vision of the All-Holy God.’”* 

Gradually, the Tractarians came to affirm that the 
waiting state, after the particular judgement at death 
by which the eternal condition of the soul is decided, 
affords opportunity for spiritual cleansing and train- 
ing as a preparation for admission to the Beatific 
Vision in heaven. 

The widespread rejection of any kind of purgatory 
by members of the English Church in the sixteenth 
and following centuries was not accompanied by 
much modification of the corresponding ideas about 
hell which were inherited from the middle ages. Popular 
thought took it for granted that the unending pains 
of hell will include the material fire and the material 
worm as means of everlasting torment. The more 
cautious theologians spoke with some reserve, but 
the natural effect of their words was to encourage the 
popular belief. Bishop Pearson represents the best 
English theological thought of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, and the expressions which he uses would not 
suggest any other view of hell to the ordinary reader. 
For he speaks of the “ pain of loss, the loss from God,” 
“the pain of sense inflicted on them by the wrath of 
God which abideth upon them, represented unto us 
by a lake of fire,” “‘ the loss of heaven and the ever- 
lasting privation of the presence of God,” “ the torments 
of fire, the company of the devil and his angels, the 
vials of the wrath of an angry and never-to-be-appeased 
God.’ The Tractarians, like others, inherited a way 


1K. B. Pusey, What is of Faith as to everlasting punishment (1880), 
Da Ter, 

2jJ. Pearson, An Exposition of the Creed, pp. 394, 397 in 1669 
edition. 


THE LAST THINGS Q7 


of regarding the pains of hell which viewed them as 
material. In the course of time they came to see that 
the difficulties of this opinion were great. The issue 
of the considerations which were forced upon them 
may be seen in Dr. Pusey’s conclusion that neither 
the affirmation nor the denial of physical sufferings 
inflicted by material fire and a material worm is of 
faith The Tractarians throughout held strongly 
to the Scriptural and traditional doctrine that the 
punishment of the lost is everlasting. 

A further question about the lost, namely, who and 
how many they will be, can never be far from thought 
when the subject of eternal punishment is considered. 
In the early years of the nineteenth century the or- 
dinary belief probably was that the lost would be 
many. A very sombre view was taken of the eternal 
state of the heathen, of unbaptized infants, of those 
who had not been given opportunities of Christian 
belief and life, as well as of those who had neglected 
opportunities and refused good of which they knew. 
This view owed something to traditional Catholic 
theology, and it had been hardened by Protestant 
teaching and thought. To some extent the sombre- 
ness of this opinion was lightened by the Tractarians, 
though the general sternness and gloom which accom- 
panied much of their work did not tend to relieve it. 
Readers of Dr. Pusey’s sermons will notice that the 
terrifying severity which marks some of them is for 
the rich, for those who know, for those who have oppor- 
tunities, and that it is his way to be considerate towards 
the poor, the ignorant, and those whose opportunities 


1H. B. Pusey, What ts of Faith as to everlasting punishment (1880), 
p. 23. 


98 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


have been few and small.1. In 1880 he clearly expressed 
what in substance he had said before, ‘“ We know abso- 
lutely nothing of the proportion of the saved to the 
lost or who will be lost; but this we do know, that 
none will be lost who do not obstinately to the end and 
in the end refuse God. None will be lost whom God 
can save without destroying in them His own gift 
of free-will.’’* Two years earlier, in 1878, the whole 
question had been faced with extraordinary candour 
and balance and judgement by the Dean of St. Paul’s, 
R. W. Church. Preaching on the text, ‘“‘ Then said 
one unto Him, Lord, are there few that be saved ? ’’® 
Dean Church brought out with unequalled power the 
different lines of thought which are suggested by the 
New Testament, and ended with an impressive appeal 
for trusting the justice of God.* In this sermon may 
be seen the finest fruit of the Oxford Movement ; and 
it should never be ignored by any who want to know 
what the ultimate direction of the Tractarians was. 

The Anglo-Catholics of to-day began where the 
Tractarians ended. To many of them the popular 
beliefs of the early nineteenth century would be almost 
inconceivable. They have inherited the results of 
long thought on the part of the Tractarians, and they 
have been affected by many influences of a different 
kind. The writings of Frederick Denison Maurice 
and Charles Kingsley and Frederic William Farrar 
have made a mark. The general temper of recent 
years has pressed more hardly on Anglo-Catholics 


1 See e.g., the sermons entitled ‘‘ Why did Dives lose his soul ? ” 
preached in 1865, and “‘ The losses of the saved,’’ preached in 1866, 
collected in the volume Lenten Sermons (1874). 

2E. B. Pusey, What is of Faith as to everlasting punishment ? 
(1880), p. 23. 

3St. Luke xiii, 23. 

*R. W. Church, Human Life and its conditions (1878), pp. 97-124. 


THE LAST THINGS 99 


than any analogous circumstances pressed on the 
Tractarians. But they, like the Tractarians, are unable 
to relinquish the truth that there may be such deliberate 
and final rejection of God, such deliberate and final 
choice of evil, as must make restoration impossible. 
To this truth they are inevitably led by the teaching 
of Holy Scripture, the tradition of the Church, and the 
consideration that man’s free will may eternally choose 
evil and that the holy God cannot take to Himself 
those who will not depart from sin.* 

Prayer for the departed is an accepted practice with 
all Anglo-Catholics. It is thought to have support 
in particular expressions,” and still more in the general 
tone, of Holy Scripture.* It has been the ordinary 
usage of the Christian Church in public worship and 
in private devotion as far back as there is evidence. 
It is demanded by considerations of reason. If there 
is survival after death, reason suggests that the !ife 
before and after death is continuous, and that such 
help as may be afforded to those still on earth through 
intercessory prayer cannot be denied to the departed. 

The present century has seen a great revulsion in 
English opinion about prayers for the dead. To a 


1 Apparently very few Anglo-Catholics accept the suggestion made 
by Bishop Gore that the punishment of the lost may be such a 
dissolution of personality as will bring with it the cessation of per- 
sonal consciousness. See his Practical Exposition of the Epistle to 
the Romans (1900), ii, 212; The Religion of the Church (1916), pp. 
91, 92. A similar suggestion was made by Mr. Gladstone: see 
his Studies subsidiary to the works of Bishop Butler (1896), pp. 172- 
198, 260-267. The difficulty which the present writer finds in such 
a view is due to (1) the solemnity of our Lord’s warnings, (2) the 
horror of the state of the lost in the mind of the Church, (3) the 
improbability that God will recall from any soul the personal con- 
sciousness which He has given. 

Par Macc. xi)4i-45 3),11 St. Timi, 16-18: cf. iv, 19. 

Pee Mate ext, 92>. St. Matk xii)\27.; St. Luke xx, 38 I'St. 
Peter iii, 18-20. 


too FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


large extent the South African war of 1899, and to a — 
far greater extent the Great War of 1914, shook popular 
prejudices, and drove English people to prayers for 
those whom they mourned. So far as the events of 
the time have promoted earnest prayer, the results 
have been altogether good; but a not unnatural 
effect of the distress and sorrow caused to human 
love has in some cases tended to impair the solemnity 
of the decisions made in the present life. For the 
present life is the only revealed time of probation. 
God in His unerring wisdom and unfailing love takes 
into account all the circumstances and all the oppor- 
tunities or lack of opportunities of each soul. He 
knows and understands all that has been seen or un- 
seen in each life. His judgement, exercised at the 
moment of death, is not subject to the imperfections 
or misconceptions of our human judgements. But, so 
far as there is revelation, and so far as the belief of 
the Church has discerned, the probation of each life 
is ended at death. The Catholic prayers for the de- 
parted are not prayers for a new probation, or for 
the reversal of what has been in life on earth, but for 
the gifts of God to the souls in whom, whatever their 
failures and imperfections and sins, He has found 
something which He can accept. 

Anglo-Catholic theology, then, regards the moment 
of death as the time of the particular judgement, that 
is, the judgement of God on the individual soul. After 
death is the waiting state. About it we know little. 
Our understanding of its nature and its conditions 
is necessarily limited. Of it experience can tell us 
nothing. We can form no idea what the life of a 
bodiless soul is like. We believe that the departed 
are living; for our Lord has told us so. We believe 


THE LAST THINGS ToL 


that they can be helped by our prayers; for other- 
wise the whole historic witness of Christian worship 
would mislead us. We can understand that, as 
in this life, progress may require some kind of pain ; 
that a clearer discernment of what the events of this 
life have meant may deepen sorrow for past sin; and 
that the preparation for the Beatific Vision of the 
All-Holy God may need a discipline no less real because 
it is wholly spiritual. Such discipline may be called 
penal, since all suffering borne by a soul which once 
has sinned is part of the punishment for sin. It may 
be said to be purifying, since all chastening rightly 
endured has cleansing power. If any have gone fur- 
ther, and have used images of material things, such 
language can be justified only as the metaphorical 
speech which may suggest realities which it fails to 
describe. 

The waiting state is the prelude to the new life of 
body and soul united by the resurrection. What the 
details of the resurrection will be like we cannot tell. 
Here, again, our ignorance is great. But the Church 
is committed to the truth that the future life will have 
the fulness which body adds to soul, and that the 
essential quality which makes one body the possession 
of one soul through all material changes from child- 
hood to old age will be for ever preserved. The Catholic 
of to-day will not get much further than the descrip- 
tion by St. Paul that the future body will be uncorrupt 
and glorious, powerful and spiritual; he may free 
himself from the embarrassments which have ham- 
pered truth in too many carnal conceptions of the 
resurrection which have been too prevalent; he may 
regret that the earnest endeavour of some Greek 
theologians to preserve the teaching of St. Paul 


toz2 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


long had an influence less wide than the attempts to 
model the heavenly life on an earthly pattern; but 
he knows that he cannot abandon the doctrine of the 
resurrection without falsifying the New Testament 
as well as parting company with the creeds of the 
Church. 

Neither have we any detailed knowledge of what 
heaven is. Such knowledge, like that of the waiting 
state and of the resurrection, is outside our present 
capacity. “It is not yet made manifest what we 
shall be ’’ ; and the revelation to us of that which we 
are to enjoy is made in figures and images not easy to 
understand. But we know of future conformity to 
the divine will and pattern: “‘ We shall be like Him ”’ ;? 
of fellowship with others in the life of the city of God ;° 
of abiding service: ‘“‘ His servants shall serve Him ”’ ;4 
of the sight of the incarnate Son of God: ‘ We shall 
see Him as He is’”’;® of admission to the Beatific 
Vision: ‘‘ They shall see His face.’’® 


ASE ohn ti; 2: 
2 Thid. 

3 Rev. xxi, xxii. 
Rev. xxii, 

OL cae Lob dit. 2. 
* Rey. ‘xxii, 4. 


CHAPTER XV 
CONCLUSION 


T has been emphasized more than once in the fore- 

I going pages that there are differences in opinion 
and differences in practice among Anglo-Catholics. 

It may be well to add here two further illustrations 
relating to matters of practice. The first is in regard 
to the fast before Communion. There is no difference 
among Anglo-Catholics that the historic custom of 
the Catholic Church prescribes that for priest and for 
people no food of any kind is to be taken before Com- 
munion. It is agreed, again, that this custom is of 
moral obligation for members of the Church of Eng- 
land who accept the authority of the Universal Church. 
It is agreed, also, that for persons near death it 
is lawful to receive the Holy Communion when not 
fasting. But, if we go on to further statements, a 
difference arises. There have always been those both 
among the Tractarians and among their successors 
who have held that other exceptions to the ordinary 
rule than the exception for dying persons ought to be 
made, and that those recovering from illness, or 
chronic invalids, or some in ordinary weak health, 
might rightly communicate after food. Of those who 
have maintained this opinion, some have held that 
each such exception should be made subject to the 
permission of the bishop of the diocese; others have 


104 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


allowed that this permission is not necessary. In the - 
last few years the position of those who have thus 
believed that the rule of keeping the fast before 
Communion allows of certain considerable exceptions 
has been strengthened by the attitude adopted in the 
Church of Rome. A hundred years ago, the Church 
of Rome maintained its traditional law that the relaxa- 
tion of the fast before Communion in any individual 
case required a dispensation from the Pope, and this 
dispensation was rarely given. During the last twenty- 
five years some change has been made. It is under- 
stood that in the early years of the twentieth century 
the papal dispensations were given more frequently 
than had been the case formerly; in 1906 and 1907 
the sacred congregation of the Holy Office allowed 
individual confessors to grant them; the revised 
canon law of 1917 recognized that individual con- 
fessors might allow liquid food to be taken before 
Communion by some in ill health; and in 1923 the 
congregation of the Holy Office permitted the celebra- 
tion of Mass by priests who had taken some liquid 
food other than alcoholic in circumstances which 
make the observance of the fast specially difficult. 
There are, then, Anglo-Catholics who hold that, in 
view of the divine command to receive Communion 
being of higher obligation than the Church’s rule of 
the fast before Communion, of occasional exceptions 
to the rule known to have been allowed in the early 
Church, of the relaxations in the Roman Catholic 
Church, and of permissions granted in the Churches 
of the East, the need of maintaining the fast before 
Communion cannot be without exceptions other than 
the case of the dying. On the other hand, some 
Anglo-Catholics hold that the law against receiving 


CONCLUSION 105 


food before Communion has so fully had the sanction 
of the Universal Church that only a formal decision of 
the Universal Church could free any from the obliga- 
tion of observing it. 

The second instance is in regard to the marriage of 
the clergy. The historical facts are well known. In 
the early Church married men were permitted to be 
ordained priests, but priests were not allowed to marry 
after their ordination. In the Eastern Church the 
broad features of this rule have been maintained 
with the added regulation that the unmarried priests 
are in monasteries, the parish priests are from those 
who have been married before ordination, and the 
bishops are selected from the unmarried priests. In 
the Church of Rome the early prohibition against 
marriage after ordination has been extended so as 
to prohibit also the ordination of the married except 
in the case of Easterns in communion with Rome. In 
the Church of England the allowance that those already 
married may be ordained has been extended so as to 
allow also that those who have been ordained may 
marry. In view of these historical facts, and of con- 
siderations of a different kind, three different opinions 
are held among Anglo-Catholics. There is the opinion 
that the Church of England has been right in allowing 
priests to marry as well as the married to be ordained, 
since married priests were recognized both in the New 
Testament and in the later history of the Church, 
since there is no fundamental difference between 
matriage before ordination and marriage after ordina- 
tion, and since what thus is theologically and ecclesias- 
tically tenable has the support of grave moral con- 
siderations. There is another opinion that the pro- 
hibition of marriage after ordination is of such universal 


H 


106 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


authority that no authority less than universal can 
alter it, and that the ancient custom still preserved 
in the East ought to be maintained. There is a third 
opinion that the Church in the West acted within 
its powers and acted rightly in prohibiting the ordina- 
tion of the married (apart from certain exceptional 
cases) as well as the marriage of the ordained, and 
that therefore the present practice of the Roman 
Catholic Church is right. Each of these three opinions 
has its advocates among Anglo-Catholics at the present 
time. 

These two instances have been selected because 
they bear intimately on practical life, and because 
the different opinions held about them indicate some 
differences of outlook. But it would be a great mis- 
take to suppose that these and other differences 
imply any real want of unity among Anglo-Catholics. 
In reality their coherence is very strong, and their 
agreement about fundamental principles very great. 

It would also be a great mistake to suppose that 
the only or main interest of Anglo-Catholics is in 
matters of theological definition or ecclesiastical obser- 
vance. They would be wholly misunderstood if they 
were thought to care only or chiefly for the externals 
of religion. Even the sacramental system which fills 
so large a place in their theology and practice is a part 
of a much larger whole. The sacraments are what 
they are because of their dependence on what is more 
fundamental. They fit into a whole method of belief 
and life. For the Catholic religion is not a series of 
doctrines and maxims and rites which are separable 
from and independent of one another. There is a 
great body of Catholic truth and practice, to the whole 
of which Anglo-Catholics recognize their responsibility. 


CONCLUSION 107 


It is a trust which has been committed to the Church 
by Almighty God Himself. The doctrines of the 
Holy Trinity and the Incarnation, of the Atonement, 
of the Holy Ghost and the Church and the Sacraments, 
of the eternal issues of life, make up the great factors 
in that trust. Subsidiary doctrines, maxims for life, 
rites to be observed, are the consequences of these 
great truths. If circumstances have led to undue 
emphasis or wrong proportion or any neglect on the 
part of Anglo-Catholics, this must be ascribed to the 
faults of individuals and not to anything in Anglo- 
Catholicism itself. 

Anglo-Catholics are sometimes charged with being 
too self-centred, too indifferent towards social evils 
and wrongs, too little eager for the conversion of the 
heathen or for the spread of Catholic truth among 
other Christians. Whatever may have been true in 
this charge at particular moments, at any rate a great 
effort has been made to remedy the defect. Since the 
time of the first Anglo-Catholic Congress in 1920, 
there has been missionary enterprise of many kinds, 
and representative Anglo-Catholics have done much 
to promote converting and spiritual movements. 
The Anglo-Catholic Congress Committee, the Society 
of St. Peter and St. Paul, the promoters of the “ fiery 
cross,’ and of many conventions for priests, have 
certainly shown abundance of enthusiasm and vigour. 
And indeed the charge was never true of Anglo-Catholics 
asawhole. The devoted labours of many parish priests 
in England, much evangelistic and pastoral work 
abroad, the Society of St. John the Evangelist, the 
Community of the Resurrection, the Society of the 
Sacred Mission, many communities of women, testify 
that this isso. That an increase of zeal is to be desired 


108 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


may not be denied. It will not be reathed by depre- 
clating what already there is. 

Rumours are sometimes heard that it will go hardly 
with Catholics in the Church of England at the hands 
of authorities. It is inconceivable that anything 
should be done to render the position of the main 
body impossible. The members of it are too numerous, 
they are too strongly entrenched, they have made 
themselves too valuable to the general work of the 
Church, they are too much in touch with some in high 
office, for any attempt at excluding them from the 
Church to succeed. It is more likely that any policy 
of exclusion will aim rather at making a division 
among Anglo-Catholics, at separating those who are 
thought to be more extreme from those who are con- 
sidered more moderate, at making things easy for 
the more moderate and unsufferably hard for the 
more extreme. The probable result of such a policy 
would be to rally all who are called ‘‘ High Church- 
men’’ to the defence of those thus attacked. 

That Anglo-Catholics will not be found unreason- 
able if treated with understanding and sympathy 
may be illustrated from the discussions which have © 
taken place about the revision of the Prayer Book. 
For many years after revision was first seriously pro- 
posed, all projects for it were steadily opposed by 
Anglo-Catholics. They held that, whatever imper- 
fections there may be in the existing Prayer Book, 
the balance of advantage was in its being preserved 
unaltered. Two circumstances had influence in pro- 
moting a different policy. First, it became clear that 
some kind of revision was almost certain; and the 
opinion grew that, if there was to be revision, Catholics 
ought to show of what kind they desired it to be. 


CONCLUSION 109 


Secondly, there were some—chiefly liturgical students 
or the younger parish priests—who had come actually 
to wish for a revision. The change in policy which 
thus came about under the pressure of circumstances 
found expression in the year 1922, when the English 
Church Union, hitherto the opponent of revision, 
put forward proposals for the consideration of the 
Church Assembly and Convocation which were popu- 
larly described as the “Green Book.” The general 
policy which underlay the innumerable details in the 
proposals was thus described :—‘ Liturgical chaos is 
an existing fact, which cannot be brought to an end 
by coercive measures. It is not practically possible 
to .enforce the rigorous observance of the present 
Prayer Book, nor, if such enforcement were possible, 
would it be very congenial to many of ourselves. And 
the doctrinal differences which exist within the Church 
of England make it impossible to substitute by general 
agreement any one other Rite in the place of the 
Prayer Book as solely obligatory. There is, there- 
fore, in our opinion, no other course open to ‘ Catholic- 
minded’ members of the Church of England than 
frankly to resign themselves to an era of liturgical 
experimentation and ‘alternative Rites.’ .... The 
policy, therefore, which commends itself to us is that 
of asking for the inclusion, amongst the permissible 
alternatives, of those rites and usages which are dear 
to us. We desire, in short, to ask the authorities of 
the English Church and our fellow-Anglicans to extend 
frank and complete legal recognition to the expression 
of Catholic faith and practice, as embodied in our 
suggested amendments. But we do not wish to force 
Catholic ideas or usages upon anyone. Coercion, 
‘even if we were in a position to exert it (which we 


trio FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


are not), is always and necessarily futile in such 
matters : we only desire to display the English Catholic 
idea in its full practical embodiment. We have 
deliberately refrained from demanding the excision 
of some alternatives which are uncongenial to our- 
selves, but are obviously designed to meet the views 
or susceptibilities of others. We disclaim any wish 
to compel ‘ Evangelical’ or “ Central’ Churchmen to 
say or do things which they do not want to say or 
do; we merely ask for permission to say and do the 
things which we do desire to say and do. May we 
not hope that other sections of the Church will meet 
us in the like spirit of generosity, confident that ‘ Truth 
is great, and must eventually prevail’? ’” 

The proposals thus made were at first uncongenial 
to a good many Anglo-Catholics. These felt that 
in some respects the proposals gave them less than 
they had been accustomed to use for many years, 
that they would be on stronger ground if there were 
no alternative to the existing Prayer Book, and that 
the suggested toleration of what others wanted would 
be a mistake. But it soon became clear that, not- 
withstanding some such misgivings, if the proposals 
made by the English Church Union were authorized as 
a whole, Anglo-Catholics, with remarkably few excep- 
tions, would cordially accept and honestly use the 
alternatives thus provided. In the judgement of the 
present writer, both the proposals themselves and the 
way in which they were regarded showed signs of a 
reasonable temper and a conciliatory spirit. It is 
still his conviction that the authorization of the “‘ Green 
Book” would do more to remove difficulties and ~ 


1 Report of the Committee on Prayer Book Revision (Office of the 
English Church Union, 1922), pp. 3, 4. 


CONCLUSION IIt 


promote peace and order in the English Church than 
almost anything else of which he can think. 

By some means or other the practical policy of our 
rulers must find a way of tolerating the Anglo-Catholic 
section of the English Church. But, the history and 
circumstances of the English Church being as they 
are, those who are thus tolerated must in their turn 
tolerate others. It was a mark of the policy adopted 
by authorities in the English Church and State during 
the reign of Queen Elizabeth to allow within the 
National Church men of most widely differing opinions, 
on the one hand those who were almost Roman Catholics 
provided they did not hold a doctrine about the Papacy 
inconsistent with the supremacy of the crown, and on 
the other hand those who were almost Puritans pro- 
vided they would outwardly conform to the regula- 
tions of the Church. This policy differed much from 
the policies of intolerance adopted in the reigns of 
Henry VIII and Edward VI and Queen Mary; it 
was open to objections from very different quarters 
and of a very serious kind ; at least it held the English 
Church together and kept possibilities open; with 
various modifications it has remained the policy of 
the English Church ever since. 

To such toleration there must, of course, be limits. 
But, so far as the present writer is able to form an 
opinion, the limits will be preserved rather as those 
who ought not to be within them remove themselves 
than as they are coerced or forcibly excluded. In his 
judgement any who so far accept the doctrines of the 
supremacy and infallibility of the Pope that their 
position in the English Church is really untenable 
will in time find this out for themselves and will act 
accordingly ; and, in a different quarter, those who 


112 FAITH OF AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC 


have definitely rejected the certain teaching of the © 
creed to which the Universal Church is committed 
will come to recognize that their right place is not 
within the historic Church. On all sides now, there 
is great need for patience, for sympathy, for care to 
deepen rather than to uproot. And to the great 
work of a renewed Christendom, powerful to grapple 
with falsehood and injustice and moral evil, the Eng- 
lish Church has its contribution to make, and, within 
it, Anglo-Catholics have theirs. 


Ne reminiscaris Domine delicta nostra vel parentum 
nostrorum. 


INDEX 






* 


EG are et 













ho et ae a r oe , A te a A =a : ‘ e, 3: toe, 
¥ 5 ey i tae SP? A ; Bi : we ah Bibi os a, wi ALLY ‘ : » ART 
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if & ’ i ’ Dip Wes j rte t 
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xh! i we ve Se 5 ro We ied ee M 
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4 ; % * +o 


PND EX 


AFFINITY, 76-78 

Anglo-Catholics, I, 4, 5, 7, 103- 
112, and passim 

Apostolic Constitutions, 65 

Articles of Religion, 47, 85, 94, 


95 
Atchley, C., 48 
Atonement, 13, 14 


BAPTISM, 24, 26, 28, 29, 30-33, 


57 
Bellarmine, Cardinal, 87 
Blessed Virgin Mary, 81-90 
Bronte, «.,) 1 


CasARius of Arles, 65, 66 

Canons of Hippolytus, 65 

Catherine of Genoa, St., 95 

Ceremonial, 3, 39-41 

Chrysostom, St., 65 

Church, The, doctrine of, 15, 16, 
18, 19 

Church, The, members of, 16 

Church, R. W., 88, 98 

Coles, V. S. S., 86 

Confession, 24, 26, 28, 29, 57-63 

Confirmation, 24, 26, 28, 29, 
309-33 

Cosin, Bishop J., 47, 48 

Cranmer, Archbishop T., 91 


Decretum, 47 
Divorce, 76-79 
Duns Scotus, 74 


ENGLISH Church Union, 109, 110 

Eschatology, 91-102 

Eternal Punishment, 97-99 

Focharist, 24,) 26; °°27, «28; 290, 
34-50, 57, 73) 74 


FARRAR, F. W., 98 

Fast before Communion, 37, 
103-105 

Forbes, Bishop A. P., 68, 69, 70, 


85, 93. 
Frere, Bishop W. H., 48 


GLADSTONE, W. E., 80, 99 
God, Christian doctrine of, 7-9 
Gore, Bishop C., 99 

Grace, 30, 31 


HAGENBACH, K. R., 27 
Harnack, A., 27 

Hauler, E., 65 

Headlam, Bishop A. C., 72, 73 
Hemerli, F., 51 

Heaven, 102 

Homily on Prayer, 91 
Horner, G., 65 


INCARNATION, 10-13 

Innocent I, Pope, 65 

Intermediate state, 91-96, 
IOI 


100, 


JAMES, St., Epistle of, 64-66, 90 
Justin Martyr, St., 45 


KEBLE, J., 52, 77, 81-84, 94 
Kingsley, C., 98 


LEGG, J. W:, 92 
Liddon, H. P., 95 
Lock, W., 81, 82 
Lyndwood, W., 47, 48 


Macic, Sacraments not, 24-26 
Marriage of Clergy, 105, 106 
Matrimony, 24, 26, 28, 29,/76-80 


116 
Maurice, F. D., 98 


NEWMAN, J. H., 1, 84, 85, 94 
ORDERS, Holy, 24, 26, 28, 29, 


Leu ee 
Original sin, 12, 13 


PEARSON, Bishop J., 89, 91, 96 

Perry, T. W.,.48 

Pius X, Pope, 79 

Pope, authority of, 19, 20, III 

Prayer Book revision, 108-111 

Prayer for the dead, 91-93, 99, 
100 

Puller, F. W., 66, 73 

Purgatory, 94-96 

PUsey Wits! Diy 52, 50,103, 79S: 
92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98 


RESERVATION, 45-56 
Resurrection, I0I, 102 
Re-union, 20-22 

Roman Church Order, 65 


SACRAMENTAI, principle, 23-27 
Sacraments, how symbols, 27 


INDEX 


Sacraments, not magical, 24-26 
Sacraments, number of, 28, 29, 


79 
Saints, 81-90 
Scripture, Holy, 16-18 


Serapion, 65, 66 


Strype, J., 91 
Swete, H. B., 74, 75 
THIERS, J. B., 51 


Thomas Aquinas, py 74, 75 

Thurston, H., 51 

Toleration, IIl, 2 

Tracts for the Times, 1, 71,73, 
92, 94 

Tractarians, I-4, 7, and passim 

Transubstantiation, 37-39 

Trent, Council of, 38, 79, 87 

Turner, C, Hiv27 aes 


UNCTION of the sick, 24, 26, 28, 
29, 64-70 


VAUGHAN, Cardinal, 92 


WAKEMAN, H. O., 5 


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